Helene hit the mountains of Western North Carolina two years ago. What follows is my chronicle of what it was like in the first week of the storm’s aftermath. It was first published in Sherry Magill’s Substack blog, JaxLookout.

What I did not know when I wrote this was that we’d be almost two weeks without electricity, and 53 days without running water.

In hindsight, that seems the least of it.

A year ago today, the Blue Ridge Parkway opened up for the first time since the storm hit one year prior. It was a devastating and beautiful ride up into the mountains. You could only go partway. Even today, the Parkway, going north, is only open for about 25 miles. You can go to Mount Mitchell, but you can’t get past it. There are heavy fines even for hikers up there.

You can still see downed trees and debris, you can still see the sides of mountains washed away. The Ingles, the Ace Hardware, and the post office in Swannanoa are all still closed.

In town, the tourists haven’t quite come back, and that’s hard on mountain towns that depend on visitors.

I’m fortunate. I work at The Battery Park Book Exchange and Champagne Bar, where our leadership has worked hard to be more available and attractive to local folks. We’re adding days, staff, and programming. Other businesses around continue to cut back on hours, staff, and offerings, and some iconic places — like The Laughing Seed — are just gone.

At the end of this article, when I say Please don’t forget us, I mean it. Please come see us. Fall is starting but I’m told it will be late this year — early November into Thanksgiving. You’ve got time to make a good plan to see the leaves, eat in our world class restaurants, and enjoy some mountain living —

Please don’t forget us.

Some Guy says, “I don’t think anyone knows how big this thing was.”

And that’s probably true.

September 25–28, 2024: Wednesday—Saturday

The problem, part of it anyway, is that an immense rainy weather system hit our area on Wednesday, September 25—two days before Helene got here. That’s when the flooding was the worst on my street. Two days ahead of the storm. By the time Helene hit, the ground was already saturated.

On Friday, September 27, we lost power and water. Fine. To be expected. I get a call from Landon. He is worried because he has no water, Internet, or electricity.

“What’s your plan?” he asked. The phone went dead on his end.

Minutes later, in a call with Canetha, I lost cell and Internet.

In the moment, though, I think this will blow over quickly.

It does not.

Saturday morning, I realize I don’t have any water for Bella the Dog. Later in the day, an evacuating neighbor brings me all of her potable water.

It’s really dark.

Sunday, September 29, 2024

I pick up my phone, and I have cell and Internet! Sort of. It’s intermittent connectivity, but I’m so happy—I didn’t realize how hard it has been to be so isolated over the course of only two days.

As we come more and more online, I cannot tell you how much your messages of encouragement and love mean. They are powerful, and they give us strength.

And we need that right now.

The other part of getting back online is seeing more and more and more what we are actually living with and among—the things you have known while we have been shut down and isolated—and how much there is to get through before we can even begin to do the work of putting Western North Carolina back together.

Almost immediately, we experience news as a kind of filter of total devastation and catastrophe through which we start to see everything else. We go looking for trouble.

On the other hand, I’m lucky.

From the exact spot where I am sitting and writing to you, things look pretty much like they always have. I am so grateful.

But one block in any direction reveals an extraordinary range of destruction. The losses here—houses, cars, pets, people—are extraordinary and the stories that accompany them are heart-wrenching.

In Montford, the neighborhood where I live, giant trees are ripped right out of the earth and pitched into the most stately and impervious of homes. Cars and trucks are smashed flat. Roads that I travel every week have slipped into the water and slid down the mountain. Lake Lure looks like a lake of logs, like you could walk across it. Friends are stranded in places that have sheltered me and my tribe for decades.

We hear stories of people swept away by walls of crashing water. Some of them are found pitched up into some high, still standing tree or wedged into collapsed limbs or hidden under the debris of collapsed roads, rocks and fractured buildings and homes. Some folks are never seen again.

Just up the road, a home’s foundation is swept away in a mudslide, and the house itself is now perched on the root ball of an upturned tree.

I’m really hungry. A neighbor comes over to the car where I am charging my phone, trying to get updates. She hands me an apple and a bottle of water. I am in tears.

Monday, September 30, 2024

I stand in a food line today—the World Central Kitchen—a first for me.

The World Central Kitchen is an outstanding organization. They hand you two packs—a starch and a protein. The line never stops moving. I barely have time to say Thank You, before they’re helping the next person. I get chicken tenders and mac-and-cheese.

I find a corner to sit and watch and listen. Here is some of what I heard —

Oh honey! Come here. You’re ok. You’re ok.

I love you so much.

This place is still just so beautiful.

This place is fucking ridiculous.

On an intellectual level, I find Tom operating at a significant deficit.

I don’t care for the fact that Shiela called my sister stupid. That’s for me to say.

Oh God. Oh my God.

Oh my fucking God.

This storm — this is the best thing that could have happened for me

I need an old fashioned, like, so bad.

I got you baby, I got you.

Motherfucker, do not touch me.

Don’t go to…

…the River Arts District

…Biltmore Village

…Swannanoa

…Old Fort

…Marshall.

Tuesday, October 1, 2024

I’m very lucky. I’ve found temporary refuge with Ginny outside of Brevard. It’s about 40 minutes away from town. I take supplies back to Asheville—5-gallon jugs that Ginny has wrangled from her neighbors and filled with drinking water.

Power is mostly on—but not in my building. Everyone around us seems to have it, and some of the residents are taking this personally. It’s getting tense.

Wednesday, October 2, 2024

Ironically, while it’s the water that has ruined this place and threatens our future the most, it’s water we most need.

Four water stations serve Asheville. Three were obliterated and one is inaccessible. Water pipes all over the area were just blown out by the sheer force of the crashing floods.

We had been told it will be a month before we would have running water again. Now the City is saying Thanksgiving.

Thursday, October 3, 2024

My day generally breaks out like this:

Wake up at 4:30 a.m.

Make a list of things I am grateful for

Walk Bella

Figure a plan for food

Execute plan

Sit in the car and get updates and charge phone

Meet neighbors at the creek with buckets to fetch water for flushing. It’s all very Laura Ingalls Wilder

Walk around

Try to be useful and encouraging

Sit in car and get updates. I have a full tank of gas, so folks gather round to charge their phones

Daily 5 p.m. check in with neighbors in the parking lot

Read and wait for dark

Walk Bella after 7:30 p.m. curfew—makes me feel subversive and powerful

Go to bed

Friday, October 4, 2024

Everywhere I go, I say to everyone I see, “Are you ok?” Most people look up and flash a quick smile or maybe just a little hint of sparkle. Sometimes they shrug or grunt before they shuffle off.

Today, I ask a man if he is ok. He just bursts into tears. I hold him for a long time. He collects himself, he wipes his eyes, nods his head, and walks away. There are no words.

If I see someone I know, my second question is always, “What’s your plan to vote?” This pisses some people off.

Some Guy says, “Don’t you think we need to be more concerned about evacuations right now?” Some Guy says, “I need to find water.” I don’t care. I keep asking. Everyone needs a plan to vote. I wonder about people in Bat Cave and Chimney Rock and Black Mountain and Gerton and Swannanoa and the places that have been destroyed or erased. The folks who are left—what are they going to do? I am sure the powers that be aren’t going to make this easy.

What’s your plan?

[NOTE for September 28, 2026 — You need a plan to vote this year. What is your plan?]

Saturday, October 5, 2024

One week later, it’s a very different landscape. The people here, in real defiance of all that was lost, have come together to make their own answers, to shed their own light, and to change the narrative as best they can.

Changing the narrative of destruction means making things seem and feel normal again.

Asheville’s downtown restaurants are cooking up food and distributing it for free. They accept your donations of food and either cook it for you before it goes bad or hand it out to folks at no charge.

Bottled water is now easy to find. There is a boil alert for everything else.

Musicians gather together in impromptu configurations and play on the street corner. People stop strangers to share stories of loss or heroism or words of encouragement and offers of help. There is great good cheer when you hear from someone who hasn’t been able to post or, better yet, when you bump into them on the street. It can feel like a festival.

The Little Jumbo, the speakeasy located right outside my bedroom window, is open from 2 to 5. Because there is no running water, it’s a bring your own cup situation. They have music. It’s a much-needed gathering place for information and community, and it feels good.

But it’s still dark and weird for sure.

Most of our news still comes from stumbling around on the street and hearing from Some Guy.

Some Guy says, “There are fights breaking out at all the gas stations.” I haven’t seen any. “You can’t get into the grocery store.” I did. “Hey! They’ve got free WiFi” . . . at some bogus place. [Note: There are updates from the City of Asheville every day at 11a and 4p. My car has gas, so the neighborhood gathers there to listen. Several times in a single broadcast, someone says, “For answers to these questions and more, check our website.” Really? I wonder if they know there is no reliable Internet.] I walked all over town trying to find free, reliable WiFi. Days passed, and then I did.

Some Guy said the big box stores on Tunnel Road have all been looted because the police are busy with rescue and recovery. Some Guy told me today that there are no guns in Walmart. They’ve all been looted. “You better get ready for that!”

On the news, right this minute, Some Guy is saying, “I hear that the city’s water stockpile was compromised before the storm.” What does that even mean?

There is a curfew from 7:30p to 7:30a. My neighbor Kevin—not Just Some Guy—just told me that, even so, he got in the long line at the Harris Teeter at 6:00a this morning. The store opens at 8. He decided to abandon his place in the very long line because the hostility was just too much. “People started cussing and hollering. You wouldn’t believe it, Bob. And then it got down into all that political shit, right and left. I’d rather starve.”

So yeah, there is that.

Later on, I stand in that line to get into that same store. The capacity has been set at 50. Five people are allowed in at a time. At the entryway, a lady is handing out lollipops and a smile. I decide I want to be her one day.

More is coming. This isn’t over. It gets better and harder every day, and there are lots of hard days ahead.

Please do not forget about us.

---

_________

Some Guy Says is written by Robert Arleigh White and distributed via Substack twice a month…give or take.

If you are enjoying these posts, please consider a paid subscription. You will support the work and create opportunities for others. Paid subscriptions start at just $5/month!

Paid subscribers! Let me hear from you in the comments below, ok?

Cheers!

You could take a Big Trip (been there) or throw a Big Party (done that)...?

Wait! I know! You could do a show!

Now that resonated with me. I had new stories to tell, new songs to sing! AND, I thought, Oh Bob! Between now and August, I bet you could even lose those pesky 40 lbs that you’ve been toting around!

I called Barbara Colaciello at Babs' Lab at CoRK North in Jacksonville, and she got excited about my proposed event in August. She was planning her own summer celebration for the Lab’s 10th Anniversary. She was introducing a new film salon in the space. She was gearing up for a big fundraiser. And of course there were the Story Slams. She clearly didn’t have enough to do...so...we agreed to do the show on Wednesday the 12^th – my exact birthday!

As we drew closer, things morphed this way and that. By May, it was clear that I weren’t going to lose 40 pounds, and the songs I wanted to learn eluded me.

Mostly.

There was this one song...

I had started to write it in the summer of 1973, 53 years ago, the summer we moved from Honolulu to Jacksonville Beach. I remember this change as betokening a time when my parents straight up lied to me: “Jacksonville? It will be just like Hawai’i! You’ll see!”

Um. No.

We did not see.

But we were staying that summer just off the old Jacksonville Beach boardwalk in Miss Sally’s charming and beautiful old beach house – now long gone to some boxy high rise beach hotel – and, just like in Hawai’i, we mostly had run of the place for the summer.

I remember walking one hot night along this old-new beach, and these words came to me:

Moonshine on a shoreline.

I am drifting away.

The light that you once had for me is fading.

I’m sailing into a mystery,

Blue and wet with foam.

I think I may be gone

For a while.

Love is such a fragile thing.

You should not touch it much.

See how my heart lives inside you,

See how the dark won’t let me return.

But there is a light out in the distance,

There is passion, there is fire...

Let it burn.

At the time, the song felt like a love letter to the islands and the people I never imagined I would see again. But now, in a new age, an older time of life, that song started to mean something else.

All of which is to say, it was never finished…but it had stayed with me.

The show came together around new and old stories that reflected a resume of sorts and the heroes and mentors and lovers and friends I met along the way —

- the time I spent working for the Internal Revenue Service (worst job ever), the summer I was the night clerk for the Ramada Inn at the Beach (most interesting and instructive job ever),

- my teaching career at Wolfson High School (easily the best school in the county – I could hardly imagine my good fortune to have landed there) and later at Fletcher (where I and all my siblings had graduated and where my sister Doris was already established as a legendary teacher),

- theatre stories – backstage tales (because that’s where the best shows take place, am I right?!); Theatre Jacksonville and Shakespeare at the Met (IYKYK); the story of The Seahorse, a performance of which saw yours truly unexpectedly tossed over a table by a fellow actor who didn’t think I had hit her hard enough in a fight scene and where I had to simulate having sex with a seabag (I am not making this up, it’s in the script, I swear) at the feet of my very own mother who was in attendance that particularly fateful night (as an aside, let me just tell you that once you’ve fucked a seabag in front of mother, well, it’s just a race to the finish, isn’t it?);

- stories from being at the Cultural Council and my introduction to working with politicians in a bright red city...lordy!

- stories about my big move to the mountains – the driving dream of my life, something I made happen and which actually came true...although not in the way I thought it would,

- stories about breaking up with the theatre I’d been hired to lead there,

- stories about the storm which shook these very mountains so hard, and where now, two years later, you can still see and feel its impacts — and it ain’t over, folks — and where I found my community and big chunks of my Self.

So many stories.

But there was one more.

See...this was going to be the first show I’d be doing without my show-partner Charlotte. I really didn’t know how I was going to manage that or just how this performance was supposed to work. We’d only ever done this work together for decades.

I’ve written a lot in these pages about Charlotte. She passed away exactly one year ago, and, while I was not with her in her passing, I spent the last week of her life with her in hospice. That was a powerful week. I am working on my re-certification as an end-of-life caregiver, and let me just tell you that week schooled me hard. Her impact on me has been truly incalculable, and her loss has been no less profound. Among many, many other things, she gave me – she insisted upon – an identity of myself as an artist.

I’m never nervous about this. I love my storytelling life. It gives me Great Joy. But. So. Yeah. This time, I was nervous.

But then things started falling into place, and in particular something really cool and unexpected happened, and – as is the manner of such things – it was just exactly what I needed. Matt Clare – our new owner and my new boss at the Battery Park Book Exchange and Champagne Bar – invited me to do an evening of stories at the store. It was a very small, intimate event, and the stories I told were my Greatest Hits (you know them, you’ve read them here – Nicest Motherfucker in the Whole Goddam City, My Parents and the Big Rain, some Grateful Dead things, you know...RAW stuff) designed to introduce myself to new audiences.

And also an opportunity for me to learn how to navigate a show on my own.

It went really well! Like...So Well! And there seemed to be a demand for this kind of thing, so Matt let me do a second show a couple of weeks later. That show...sheesh I guess it was all right…but…it was not without its own challenges.

For one thing, the air conditioning in the whole of the iconic Grove Arcade was out...had been out for, like, three days. We thought we could pull this one off even so. Matt and our Events Manager, Lauren David, created a lovely setting in the café —there were bottles of ice water on the beautifully arranged tables, and a welcoming convivial beverage, and a full and open cash bar...and...but...

It was just too hot.

I mean it. At the half, three people had to bail. I so wish I could have been one of them. But I struggled along and made it through sweating, as has been said, “like a whore in church.” But. At the end of it all, stories were told, songs were sung, laughs were shared, tears were shed, and the water, at least, was cold.

As challenging as it was for me and for that audience, it was still a wonderful training ground for the big birthday show to come in Jacksonville.

Tickets to RAWTalks: Moonshine on a Shoreline went in a flash. I mean it. Under 24 hours. Sold Out. I was...amazed. We added another performance for August 13. Those tickets went like lightening. I want to tell you, too, that when we had four tickets open up for the Thursday show, they were each quickly snapped up by former students. This was deeply moving, and I do not know how to reflect back that kind of love. Thank you. Thank you, thank you.

This was also when I started to feel some pressure. See, Charlotte and I had always sold-out Babs’ Lab, but that was a process that found us sweating ticket sales up until moments before showtime. This audience was ready!

Was I?

I was fixated on finally completing the song – Moonshine on a Shoreline. I sent the lyrics off to Laura Evans. Laura was the inventor of RAWTalks. She even came up with that name. She took the lyrics and worked to sort them into the beautiful visual for the program that we used in our social media and which I then had turned into beautiful cards as take-aways for the event. There was a lot of talk between me and Laura, and I began to realize more and more deeply that this was no longer a song about Hawai’i. It was something else now.

On the night of the first show, I was surely excited and nervous. It was my birthday after all – the Big Seven-Oh. Thank goodness Canetha was there. Canetha, my frequent collaborator on these pages and off, lives now in Roanoke and has attended – and managed – nearly every RAWTalk that ever there was. She’s a hero...along with...so many people! People — heroes — I hadn’t seen in years and years. There were folks there from every single job I ever had in Jacksonville, folks from every single part of my life. I tried to call everyone out as best as I could think to during the performance. In retrospect, I wish I had said more about these magnificent friends.

If you were in that room that night, you are surely a hero to me.

Well, right out of the gate, here’s what happened. I started, as I do every show, by singing Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now.” I love that song for its portrayal of duality — up and down, give and take, win and lose — and for the springboard it provides for jumping off into anything that can come up in a RAWTalk. And plus besides which, I’ve sung that song a hundred thousand times, give or take.

As soon as I started it up, I could see the wreck that was headed my way, and it went something like this —

“Rows and flows of angel hair

And ice cream castles in the air

And feather canyons everywhere

I looked at clouds that way and I have forgotten the goddam words to this song, does anyone here know them? Anyone? I mean – I’m 70 today so I’m just at the very tippety-top of all the shit I’m planning to forget, right, but I’m smart enough to ask for help here so I’m going to start over and if you know this song – PLEASE PLEASE – sing along with me!”

And that, my dears, is just what we did.

So. We were all in it together now!

The show went off elsewise without a hitch. One especially memorable part came when I told a story about fundraising for the Museum of Science & History with another of my heroes in attendance, the Museum’s former President, Maria Hane. You would not think there’d be much of a story in this, but check it out —

There was this donor family who had capacity and interest, but they needed a little more...a little more this...a little more that. Every time we met with them, the bar went up a little bit more. One day, in a debrief with Maria, I said, “Honest to God, what do these people want? They need to sign the fucking check!”

And then someone in the back yelled, “Yeah! Sign the fucking check!”

And someone down frost said, “Sign the fucking check!”

And just like that, the whole audience began to chant —

Sign the Fucking Check!

Sign the Fucking Check!

Sign the Fucking Check!

Unless you were there, you cannot know what a glorious feeling it is to chant Sign the Fucking Check with a room full of sweethearts and heroes! I could have died right there and been happy about it – best chant ever!

But then very suddenly – just like in this paragraph – it was time to remember Charlotte. Unlike the North Carolina audiences who did not expect to see her, the Jacksonville folks knew me as a performer because of Charlotte, had only ever seen me with her.

There was an empty chair on stage with me. There was also a cymbal with a violin bow that Charlotte had taught me how to drag across to make other-worldly sounds. So, in that regard, she was present.

I told the story about sitting with her one day in that last week of her life while she was sleeping. She started awake and looked at me and said, “It’s not my fault.” She had been worried that she had done something to cause the cancer that was so actively killing her. This was something she struggled with until she achieved this epiphany – It’s not my fault.

I looked at her and said, “Sometimes...these things just happen.”

She said, “Tongues.”

And I said, “Tongues.”

A small and mighty miracle. “Sometimes these things just happen.” That is a line from the Sam Shepard script for “Tongues: a piece for Voice and Percussion” which had been our first performance together. Now, nearly 40 years later, where did that memory even come from? How was it that we both instantly knew?

Discovering in a dream that, whatever this was, it wasn’t her fault gave her peace, the real peace she needed. And so she stopped struggling.

And so a few days later she slipped away.

Moonshine on a shoreline

I am drifting away

The light that you once had for me is fading

I’m sailing into a mystery

My memory of the performance of that song on my birthday is that it was no longer mine. Nor was it a song about Charlotte or even for her.

It was her song.

Some Guy Says is written by Robert Arleigh White and distributed via Substack twice a month — give or take — and benefits mightily from the editorial support provided by Canetha Dodd — to whom and for which I am truly grateful.

You can subscribe for FREE!!

But…

Please consider a paid subscription. It supports this work and creates opportunities for others. Paid subscriptions start at just $5/month! Woohoo!

I was the Director of the Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville. It was a Tuesday morning. We were headed into our regular staff meeting when the phones started ringing. Our front office guy stuck his head in my office, concerned: “Something weird’s going on. They’re saying a plane flew into a tower in New York City?”

“Okay, well let’s get everyone in the conference room and get the meeting going. We can figure that out later.”

Just then, I got simultaneous calls from my mother on the office line and from my partner on my cell. They each had the same message, “You need to get to a television.” That was my first clue that something awful had happened.

Everybody was confused, nobody understood what was going on, but when we heard that the second tower had been hit, we all knew this was...really something. We found a tiny – I mean tiny – 4-inch screen, black and white television set and once we got that thing figured out, we turned it on just to see the first tower go down. It was a live shot on the Today Show.

I shut down the meeting and sent everyone home. I was sure no one in America would be doing work that day or for the rest of the week. I wanted parents to be with their children, and I wanted everyone to be safe. I wanted a lot. I checked in with friends and family.

One person it never occurred to me to reach out to was Jack.

Jack Masters was a dear friend and mentor to me. He was a bona-fide WWII hero, had been a Big Cheese with Blue Cross and Blue Shield, active at Theatre Jacksonville. He had just turned 80. He was gay and lived alone.

Jack was elegant and polished and all the things I wasn’t. He lived in a beautifully appointed carriage house in Riverside, and we lived in a rambling and eclectic Avondale bungalow. He had fixed routines, I didn’t. He liked his quiet independent life. I was always off to an art show or performance and then on to Biscotti’s to discuss and debate. He was from Virginia and had what I like to think of as a truly aristocratic southern drawl. I grew up everywhere and didn’t much sound like anything. Our friendship was a deep and unlikely treasure.

On the morning of September 11, Jack got up, fixed his coffee, made his breakfast, worked a crossword, organized and puttered, did all of his regular Jack things. Among the things he did not do – never did – was to turn on morning news on TV or check in with our local public radio station.

In this quiet and steady way, he kept himself busy until 2:00pm when he always walked to the post office to collect his mail. The door on the post office said CLOSED, and that was puzzling. It was a Tuesday after all, remember? Jack could see someone moving around inside, so he tapped on the window. A USPS employee cracked open the door.

“The post office is closed?” Jack asked.

“Yes. Because of the tragedy.”

When Jack told me this story, he said, “I’m old, I’m not stupid. I knew if there were a tragedy big enough to shut down the postal system of the United States of America, it was probably very serious, indeed, and I wasn’t about to say, ‘Oh? What happened?’”

But he went back home and somehow thought nothing of it. He found projects and distractions the way retired folks do. He took a nap. At five o’clock be mixed his cocktail and at 6 made his dinner. He went through the rest of the day reading, not talking with a soul, not getting any calls until it was time for the 11 o’clock news. That’s when he turned on his TV and heard for the first time what had happened in America that day.

And then he became like the rest of us – just glued to the TV for the next several days.

I think this is the most extraordinary of the stories I collected because I could not imagine — cannot begin to fathom — living in this media-hungry country, even as it was 25 years ago, and going through a whole day and not hearing one peep about the planes and the towers and Philadelphia and the Pentagon and the people and the terror and the hate.

It was all driven home to me when Jack looked at me and said, almost pointedly, “No one told me anything.”

So I promised to put him on my Person to Call List.

Jack passed away a long time ago. I’m glad that he – like my parents – is not here to see the awful unfolding in America today. It’s not lost on me that normal postal operations are threatened with suspension due to a new and excruciating tragedy.

And that’s one of the reasons why I post the way I do on social media.

I don’t think I need to explain myself or make excuses about my posts, even though that is what I seem to be doing. I will say that once a month or so I vow to lay off posting about current events and politics and all the awful bullshit we are made to look at all the time. I will tell you that I look back at what I’ve shared online, and I do delete a lot of it because so much really does become old news really fast. I reckon that I do add to the noise of it all. I’m sure I’m not changing anyone’s mind and even so I think a lot of those folks were tossed off my little lifeboat long ago.

I just want people to know. I don’t want anyone to look at me and say, “No one told me anything.”

My friend and our own Southern treasure, Jim Draper, is preparing to lead us through a 30 day course on noticing in service to his vision for Radical Naturalism.

The whole process, as described in the link below, sounds fascinating and serious and fun!

I’m writing today to encourage you to join me in what I am sure will be a transformative and enriching experience with the natural world. A paid subscription to Jim’s Substack gets you in to the course for free!

I can’t wait to begin this work and I hope you’ll join me there.

Cheers for your week!

Jim’s Substack

Get Ready

I am very excited to start 30 Days of Noticing. For all of my paid subscribers here are some suggestions for various supplies you might want to have handy to enhance your participation…

Read more

2 months ago · 3 likes · 6 comments · Jim Draper

Here’s a quick and heartfelt word of thanks for all your support this year. I’ve got more coming soon but wanted to share a couple of quick updates.

First…and some would argue against my best efforts…I turned 70 last week. I celebrated by doing a couple of shows at the Battery Park Book Exchange and Champagne Bar in Asheville, NC and two really big shows at Babs' Lab at CoRK North in Jacksonville, FL. I’m so grateful for these opportunities and for the support and good cheer that they garnered!

For the Bab’s Lab show, I put together a pre-show set list. A couple intrepid souls asked about it, so I’m posting a Spotify link to it here —

As you shall see, or hear, I love me a good pop song!

When I first dreamed up the RAWTalk show for Jacksonville, I was obsessed with this Pete Townshend cover of a favorite English Beat song, but it doesn’t appear to exist anywhere except on YouTube…so…here it is standing brave and tall and on its own…

Anyways, these are small gestures meant to convey my big appreciation. I hope you find something to enjoy in all of this.

In the meantime, I have lots to tell you so be on the lookout!

Love and Cheers — Bob

Some Guy Says is written by Robert Arleigh White and distributed via Substack twice a month…give or take.

Please consider a paid subscription. It supports this work and creates opportunities for others. Subscriptions start at just $5/month!

Let me hear from you in the comments below, ok?

Cheers!

We are putting together all the details you need for an added performance that will take place on Thursday August 13 at Babs’ Lab!

I am astounded and amazed, and I am in love…with YOU!

In the early part of this month, I presented the first RAWTalk in Asheville. Matt Clare, my boss and our new owner at the Battery Park Book Exchange, invited me in, and even though there were only 27 seats, I still played to a sold-out gallery!

It was a first for another reason, too: it was my first-time out — first time onstage in this format in fact — in almost 40 years without my performance partner, Charlotte Mabrey.

If you’ve been to one of these events, you know that Charlotte was invaluable and irreplaceable. We did really beautiful things: movement pieces, poems, riffs, goofs, and more.

Here are a some links to a few of my favorite texts:

Song by Allen Ginsberg

My Name by Mark Strand

Moon by Mark Strand

If you’ve been to one of these performances, then you know I take questions from the audience written and submitted on 3x5 cards. Charlotte was a perfect foil for me as the manager of this part of the program:

“Oh. He’s not going to want to talk about that!” she’d say as she tossed a card over her shoulder.

“You know, there is a really sick person in the room!” she’d snap as she ripped a card to shreds.

“Oh! This should be fun!” she’d exclaim over a vaguely mischievous question that struck her as adventuresome without being necessarily risky.

But mostly, she was curious and encouraging when asking someone else’s question. She always took good care of me.

Fortunately, one sweet soul at the latest show — the first show here — wrote on their card, “Tell us about Charlotte.”

As the principal percussionist for the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, Charlotte was not just a legend in Northeast Florida, but also in the symphonic world where, let’s face it, there just weren’t/aren’t a whole lot of female percussionists working at that level.

Charlotte had big ideas. She wanted to be a well regarded performance artist. So she became one. She wanted to work in collaboration with people —partners — who would listen and challenge and give and tickle and take turns leading and following. So she did. And not just me. She wanted especially to do oddball things that were quirky, weird, and fun and challenging and uncomfortable…things that mattered. Always.

I got a chance to tell a few stories about Charlotte at this most recent performance — I got a million of ‘em — and I imagine I’ll keep telling them as long as people ask as she has left a very big whole which, near as I can tell, cannot be filled.

At the show, people who knew her — and people who were learning about her — got misty and teary and giggley and amazed.

I’ll do my second RAWTalk at the Book Exchange without Charlotte on Monday, July 27. I’d love for you to come and see.

Northeast Florida friends — I will see you in August. Lord have mercy, I am turning 70, and I’m coming home to tell you all about it.

Thanks for reading and coming out and helping with your encouraging words and support. Love y’all.

Some Guy Says is written by Robert Arleigh White and distributed via Substack twice a month…give or take.

Please consider a paid subscription. It supports this work and creates opportunities for others. Subscriptions start at just $5/month!

Let me hear from you in the comments below, ok?

Cheers!

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In thinking about what I wanted to post for this Fathers’ Day, I revisited this piece from a year ago. I had shared it with you as a remembrance of my father’s passing on May 19, 2012.

Truth to tell, I don’t think I have much to add or to take away from it, so I am re-running it today.As you shall see or recall, my dad was accomplished and complicated. It was never going to be easy being his son. As my dad himself might have said, “I never signed up for this!”

By this point in your journey with Some Guy Says, you’ve read a lot about my parents and family life. My folks were very important to me. At the end of the day, I was very lucky. Looking ahead, I am very grateful, and I am learning more and more about anger, forgiveness, and love.

May is tough.

If I ever lost anything, anything I treasured, it was in the month of May: pets, partners, pursuits both professional and personal...you name it.

It was also the month when, in 2012, I lost both my parents.

— I’m put in mind of this line of Oscar Wilde’s: “To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” —

See, in my family, we say that Dad probably lived four months past his Use-By Date. He got caught between the protocols of hospitals which are meant to keep you going and hospices which are meant to help move you on along.

It was tedious.

And the thing was, the strain of being his caretaker in those four months overwhelmed my mother.

I suppose there was a kind of carelessness in letting that go on too long for the both of them.

That’s the easy answer, anyway. Looking back, I think it was much more complicated and nuanced and existential than that. Mom was part of that generation, you know? She was Mrs. Robert White. If there were no Robert White, then who was she? Now it occurs to me that, when Dad really started to sink, she must have thought about this a lot.

I think she set an intention.

Dad passed 13 years ago today, and Mom died 10 days later. As Dad himself said, and as has been reported here, there were just too many things that were wrong with him that could not be fixed.

Within days prior to his passing, my tearful mother told me they’d found that Dad had prostate cancer. My careless response: Are you fucking kidding me? Really?

He also had Parkinson’s, diabetes, and — the worst by far and away — macular degeneration.

This particular type of blindness combined with his Parkinson’s to lead to a kind of dementia. It’s what happens when your brain attempts to decipher the things that your eyes no longer can. Sometimes, his brain would tell him that he was surrounded by 24 robbers. Other times, there would be 24 children or kittens or swarms of butterflies or floaty things that even his brilliant mind could not fathom.

At first, he was able to reason his way out of his trouble. How could there be 24 robbers in their high-security, upper floor, senior living compound? Well, there couldn’t. What about those kittens? As he reached to scoop one up, it evaporated and another one was there, but, like, over there. And the floaty things? How many times did I catch him flailing at the air trying to catch at one.

And this happened All the Time.

As soon as he told himself that there couldn’t possibly be 24 robbers in the house, there would be 24 more. It wore him out and down and, beyond a certain point, he started living in this place where robbers and kids and kittens and butterflies and floaty things would suddenly and constantly appear.

It must have been frightening. It was certainly aggravating.

The even bigger problem was my mother. She had no patience for any of it: “Robert! You KNOW there are no robbers in this house!”

I wanted her to be kinder, more patient. Now it seems that my father’s living with all this disorder meant that she lived in it, too, and she simply could not ward or will any of it away for him. She was powerless.

That must have been frightening. It was certainly aggravating.

Although my parents were raised far apart from one another — Dad in Dothan, Alabama and Mother mostly in Hickory, North Carolina — they shared many salient points of connection. They were both Depression babies. Both born into huge families – Dad was the eighth of ten children, and Mom was the eighth of eight. Both had violent, unruly, alcoholic fathers incapable of holding down jobs or providing for families or even taking care of themselves.

Somehow in all of this, my parents held on to the faith of their mothers. It was a miracle of that faith, I suppose, that they found each other. And it was a practical and perfect point of this kind of spirituality that they pretty much died together.

Once, I heard Mom say that she couldn’t wait “to be in Heaven together forever with Robert.”

Like the good Navy man he was, Dad said, “No, Mary, no. Til death do us part. That’s all I signed up for.”

Dad grew up in a family of 12 in a two-room house. I cannot imagine what must have gone on in there. Even so, Dad was — as will sometimes happen for children of alcoholics — astounding. He excelled in everything he did. He was a straight A student, captain of the basketball team, editor of the school paper, president of the junior class, and there’s probably more I don’t know about.

Toward the end of his senior year, about a year before the end of WWII, he had an opportunity to join the Navy. He grabbed at that chance and high tailed it out of Dothan. His school arranged for his early graduation. The trade-off was that, rather than fulfilling his dream of becoming class valedictorian, he graduated as salutatorian.

It didn’t matter – he was out of there! He was off to adventures! He had bigger dreams to chase!

See, someone had deeded him a plot of land right there where I-10 now runs through Dothan. Dad’s Big Dream was to use that plot in combination with his GI bill to finance a big deal education at a big deal school in the Northeast and land a big deal career as an advertising executive on Madison Avenue in New York City!

My dad, a Mad Man. I mean…can you even?!

Doesn’t matter. That dream did not come true.

When he got out of the Navy and went back home, he discovered that somehow his father had gotten ahold of his land and drank it all away, and that broke Dad’s heart clean in two. I do not believe he ever healed. Instead, he went back into the Navy determined to get as far away as he could from Dothan, Alabama, and to my knowledge he never saw his father again.

In the Navy, Dad, true to form, bested everything he set his mind to. He rose quickly through the ranks, and in doing so he caught the attention of Admiral Arleigh Burke who was the Commander in Chief of US Naval Operations. Admiral Burke was impressed with Dad’s communication skills, in particular his way with the written word. I am sure Admiral Burke also filled a mighty hole in my dad’s heart. He was someone Dad really needed. Their relationship was profound.

— The admiral was also a full-on hero of WWII and the Korean War, and you can read about him here: Admiral Arleigh Burke —

Dad was stationed at the Pentagon in DC when he was assigned to the admiral’s team. It was his job, then, to train his replacement.

That person turned out to become my mother.

I mean it. Train my mother. As if.

Anyway, that’s how they met.

And not too long after that, they married. And 11 months later I was born and given Arleigh as my middle name. There is a kind of irony in that because, as my father groused, by the time he came along his family couldn’t afford fancy things like indoor plumbing and middle names.

For the record, I love my name.

— This puts me in mind of Eudora Welty’s comment that, after the Civil War, Southerners, Black and white, were so poor they could ONLY give their children beautiful names. —

Working for the admiral landed us in Naples, Italy in 1958. After that, Dad did a stint on the USS Kitty Hawk. During this time, we lived around the corner from my mammaw in Lenoir, NC. Then Dad was sent back to the Pentagon, so we moved again to DC. From there, he became the Naval Attaché to Norway. From Oslo we moved to Winter Park, Florida where Dad helped open a brand-new navy base, one that has since closed because...let’s face it...I am that old.

BTW, in Norway, we lived across the street from the Dutch embassy and around the corner from the King’s Palace. It was as close to living inside a fairytale as anything you can imagine. In Winter Park, base housing hadn’t been built, so the Navy arranged for us to live in a trailer park in the middle of an orange grove...pre-Disney.

The view from my bedroom window at 26b Oscarsgate. That’s the Dutch Embassy on the left.

…requires no explanation

From there it was back to DC for a scant few months, and then Dad was transferred to Honolulu to serve on the staff of Admiral John S. McCain, the senator’s father. This was right after General William Westmoreland was retired, and the admiral took over running the war in Viet Nam while his son was being held there as a prisoner of war.

It was a tense time for our country and in our home. Admiral McCain took to drinking heavily, and it fell to Dad to hold things together. And he brought all that home.

The good news was that, as long as I made good grades I pretty much had run of the island. So I did that.

At the beginning of my senior year, Dad was transferred to become the Chief Executive Officer of the Navy Base in Mayport, Florida, just outside of Jacksonville. I was supposed to stay behind to finish up high school, but at the last minute those plans fell through. It was May when my island life was upended, and we moved to Florida.

This move may have been the one and only time I know for sure that my dad lied to me: “It will be just like Hawai’i! You’ll see! They have beaches and surfing and all the fun things you love! It will be great!”

It was not.

For the record, Jacksonville touts itself as a Great Place to Live, Work and Play. That may be. But this one thing is sure: Jacksonville is no Honolulu.

Think of it like this:

How many people in Jacksonville do you suppose save up their whole lives to be able to spend two weeks in Hawai’i?

How many Hawai’ians do you think do the same thing to spend any kind of time anywhere in Florida?

See what I mean?

It didn’t help that I needed a half credit of PE and a half credit of this heinous thing called “Americanism vs Communism” to graduate from Duncan Upshaw Fletcher Senior High School in Neptune Beach, Florida. I went to school for half a day for half the year and blew out of Florida as fast as I could.

While my experience of living at home was nothing like my Dad’s, it is not lost on me that, echoing his journey, I left home at 17 with straight As, too, to go as far away as I could.

It wasn’t easy to be his son. I was never going to hit those same marks. Ever. It was…not possible.

Still, unlike Dad, I was leaving a mostly perfect situation. And…I came back home and stayed there for 44 years.

To be clear: my life would have been impossible anywhere else. Jacksonville gave me everything I have and all that I am.

It took a lot out of me, too, and that’s all right. Near as I can tell, it’s all about balance anyway. On the whole, I am very grateful.

Fast forward to 2008. That was the election cycle featuring Senators John McCain and Barack Obama. Dad’s health was in obvious decline. We took away his keys.

Even though he could hardly see it, Dad sat in front of the TV and watched the news all day long. He and I often watched it together. That was something I loved to do with him, especially if the stories were political.

On this particular night, John McCain was blathering on about some damn thing or another when Dad said: Look at him! He has the temperament of a torpedo, you can’t believe a word he says, and he makes John Kennedy look like a Sunday School teacher!

Me: Oh wow! So are you going to vote for Barack Obama?

Dad [looking at me as if I’d turned into 24 robbers]: Of course not! I cannot imagine telling Roberta [the senator’s mother] that I didn’t vote for Johnny [because in actual real life, that was what Dad called the senator]!

Two weeks later. Same scenario. Only this time, we were watching Barack Obama.

Dad: Look at him! He really knows what he is talking about! He’s even-Steven, steady-as-she-goes! I think he’s a good person!

Me: So you’re going to vote for him?

Dad: Certainly not!

Me: Because…what?

Dad: Because! [Almost a whisper…] Your mother would know!

Me: Oh come on – when you are in that voting booth, it’s just you and Jesus and…

Dad: Your mother will know!

And it’s true. Over the course of their lives, they melded into one another. By this time they leaned on each other for everything. They were needed, and there was comfort in that dependency.

Very near the end of their lives, when he was totally blind and she was practically deaf, he liked to joke, “Well, Mary, I guess it takes two of us to make a whole person now.”

Then, just that fast, by the end of May in that year, they were gone.

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Some Guy Says is written by Robert Arleigh White and distributed via Substack twice a month…give or take.

Special thanks to Canetha Dodd for editorial support!

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I am right at a year old. I am not quite walking, but I can pull myself up to a stand. I think my family must be moving out of our house in Falls Church, and my parents have placed me in the corner of an empty room where I should be out of harm’s way.

I know exactly what I am wearing: it is one of those corduroy overall getups that babies wear to this very day. Mine is powder blue, and there is some red embroidery outlining something or other – a rabbit maybe? – at the knee.

I am fascinated by the snaps that go up and across the inside of the legs. As I play with them, I discover that I can unsnap them. I pull myself up and see the legs of the overalls flopping around my own, so I start a clumsy dance. It is a delightful feeling and a wonder to watch the legs of the overalls swish around me. I am so happy.

Maybe I am giggling and squealing. That must be what has called my mother back into the room. I watch her expression change from concern to exasperation as she huffs her way over to me and firmly sits me down and snaps me back up again.

She leaves the room. She has things to do.

I unsnap the britches and stand up and dance while holding onto the wall.

This is how she finds me again. She is not pleased. This time she plops me down and snaps me back up. How many times has she had to do this?

I don’t remember if I unsnapped and stood up and danced again. I think I was starting to pay attention, starting to understand some basics about cause and effect.

In a way, it has been the story of my life. I’m feeling loose and amorphous and wonder and delight, and then I get — or maybe I let myself get — re-ordered again.

Plop. Snap.

You know?

When I was two and three, my family – now with baby sister Lizz in tow – lived in Naples, Italy. I am told that my first language was Italian which makes sense since both of my parents worked out of the home, and we were left in the care of an older non-English speaking Italian couple who lived on the floor below. I don’t remember any Italian, but I do remember finding my mother’s maternity blouses as she was pregnant then with sister Doris. I remember creeping into them and twirling all over the bedroom that Lizz and I shared. I loved the way the fabric billowed and swirled around me. I loved the way it moved the air and made me feel like I was not inside my body.

Mother was gone somewhere. Traveling. We were left with Dad. He would find me in one of those blouses and, well, that was real trouble. I mean...Really Bad Trouble. I am paying very close attention. I am learning a lot about Trust.

An awful lot.

Fast forward a couple of years, I am four. We are living in Norfolk, VA, and vacationing in nearby Virginia Beach. We are in a small hotel room that has an actual black and white television set. The beach is fun, but the TV is astounding! Especially the commercials. I remember particularly the commercials with Mr. Clean. I did not have a sexual understanding of myself then – I mean, I was four years old fer cryin out loud – but I am frozen in front of this cartoon muscle man with a golden hoop earring wearing capri pants —

Mercy.

So.

Here you go.

Three memories of early childhood. I’ve got plenty more, believe you me. But there’s one in particular I think I need to share to make this story complete.

So. When I was like 10-11-12, right? I really really wanted to be a girl.

I would go to bed every night and I would pray: Dear Lord Jesus please please please let me wake up as a little girl and — please please please, Sir — if You are going to go to all the trouble to flip my gender in my sleep, please let the results be unremarkable!

Well. In hindsight, I can’t say for sure that I really really wanted to be a little girl. I think that what I really really wanted was to normalize my feelings about men because I didn’t understand them — the feelings. I totally get men. But I elsewise felt awkward and weird and not in my skin and-and-and if I were a little girl maybe I could grow up and marry Mr. Clean!

See?

In any case, and at the end of the day, it didn’t matter because I turned 13 and hit puberty, and then my prayer was, like, Hey Jesus: no worries, I’m good!

To be sure, there are other kinds of memories, too, “non-gay” memories like fun family vacations, amazing travels in the world, academic and professional achievements, deep and glorious friendships with boys and girls, men and women, high times and low, scary times that I came through, and so much more.

In fact, it is inside these spaces that, as a small gay boy and a young gay person, that I chose to live. These were the spaces that I had painstakingly constructed so I could feel safe.

For most of high school, we lived in Hawai’i. I went to Hawai’i Baptist Academy. Here, we dated girls, made professions of faith, laughed at queer people, and, as queer kids, hid.

My parents told me that, as long as I made good grades and achieved some other prescribed benchmarks, I could have run of the island. So? Like a lot of queer kids, I constructed a safety net of good grades, a polite and deferential demeanor, a sort of attentiveness that demanded care, maintenance and unwavering attention to the details and interests of the others — the family and social and academic worlds I lived in — and, most importantly, drew no untoward attention to myself.

Or so I thought.

In my middle-ages I learned from high school gal pals that pretty much everyone knew I was gay even when I did not. Again, I had no language, no context, no place to put these feelings. All I knew was I was somehow different and, godalmighty, I did not wish to be.

Hard to believe but true nevertheless.

In an interview where she discusses her music, queerness, and identity, the singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist St. Vincent says: “Everything is a construct. It is all construct” which I take to mean constructed. She describes sexual identity as “performance,” not in the sense of deception but more in the sense of learning to read a room, to monitor yourself; deciding — being in charge of — what to reveal about yourself and when, and understanding that identity is largely contextual.

This part really hit me:

“Being queer means having multiple realities at once. I’m queer, so I know how to code-switch.”

Code-switch. I had never heard that term before, but I knew instantly what it meant. According to Wikipedia: “Code-switching is the practice of alternating between two or more languages, dialects, registers, or cultural behaviors depending on the social context of the audience. While it originated as a linguistic term to describe multilingual speakers blending languages, the definition has broadened in sociology to describe how individuals adapt their speech, appearance, and mannerisms to fit into different environments.”

So?

Code-switching was something I got really good at.

So good that...

When I was 36 years old, I finally came out to my parents. It never occurred to me that coming out to them was something I needed to do or even something that I could do. When I say that it wasn’t something I could do, I mean that in the sense of How do you reveal something to folks who [should] already know? How in the world did they miss that little gay dancing baby in twirling maternity blouses? What did they think those musicals – so many character shoes and dance belts – were all about? What about all the girls I never brought home? How, at a minimum, could they not have guessed?

How could they not know?

It made no sense.

I should say here, too, that among gay men my age who remained closeted from our parents in those days (80s, 90s), it was common to hear folks/us say, Why should I tell them I am gay? They never told me they are straight!

Except they did.

Every day. All the time.

Every private whisper, every slide of a finger into a hand held, the way she made his coffee, the way he turned out the lights and shut the house down at night, even every argument over the dinner table and the ways they found to navigate again toward each other, everything said to me that my parents were straight people who loved each other.

I wanted access to those gestures, too. I wanted something unconstrained and — this is very important — unremarkable.

By this time, too, my walk in the world was pretty queer, and I was elsewise very much at ease with myself as a gay man. I didn’t hide it, but I also did not think of my own self as a gay person fundamentally. I was a lot of other things. Important things. Fancy things. I was Robert and Mary Anne’s son with an amazing middle name to live up to, a teacher to your little darlings, a colleague, a cultural and civic leader (so I am told), an award winning actor, director and performance artist, a storyteller in partnership with a beloved lesbian percussionist. A powerful code-switcher.

All of these things point to...gay. Right? Even/especially that part about Robert and Mary Anne: remember that dancing baby?

So.

I thought it would be easy – which is to say that I did think it would be weighty and important but not necessarily hard – to have this conversation with my parents.

You see, my plan was never to come out per se but rather to tell them about a really wonderful man and our powerful relationship that I wanted them to celebrate with me, with us.

Hoo-boy.

Here’s the deal: that timing is never right. You know? So I put myself on a deadline to have this talk with them. And I learned right quick that the time is never going to be right to tell your Southern Baptist parents that you are gay. Or in love with a man. Or, goodness me, all kinds of queer things. Like the way my happy queer dancing childhood were among the very things that made me so, so happy.

I waited til the very last minute of my self-imposed deadline. And I got nervous. I scripted myself. I didn’t want to be distracted. I also wasn’t sure I wanted to have to look at them. Not sure I could. When I did sneak a glance, I don’t recall their looking at me. I see them looking at each other.

It was awful.

Anyway.

I read a letter to them.

It was crystal clear that what I had brought forward to my parents was a full-on bolt out of the blue. There were long silences, even tears. I got angry that, at my age and against everything else I had thought and done and been and accomplished, I hadn’t been seen. I believed I had done a lot of this for them…

But…

Maybe I was just a better code-switcher than I thought?

Right?

Because at the end of the day, being gay is fundamental. It’s like air. It is just that basic. You just breathe; you don’t think about it…until you do. Like when you have to hold your breath. Absent of anything else, it is how you see the world and everything in it because it is who you are. In this regard, it is unremarkable.

Straight people, you do it, too — it is how you see the world, how you walk in it without even thinking about it.

Ever.

Anyway.

It took a very long time for the three of us to find our way back towards each other. And oddly, it was my high-ranking navy dad who made the first effort toward healing. He asked about Bruce. He was interested when we bought the house and gave good advice on negotiating a mortgage and managing a household and what to plan for.

Mother took a lot longer. A lot. Years. But she got there.

There is so much I’m leaving out because, honestly, there’s not much in this life that is more tedious than having to endure someone else’s coming out story. I mean…how is this still even an issue, a thing? Interesting? Useful? Relevant?

Well, I’ll tell you.

The politics of the day make it important. Are you paying attention? That othered people are being driven back into the shadows makes these stories useful, relevant, and important. Gay people, gay families – children and parents and all of us – are plainly under attack. This is important. It has never in my lifetime been harder for gay adults to model practical survival skills, let alone excellent behavior, for scared queer kids. I wonder how I’m going to let them know that “It gets better” than it is right now because I cannot be sure that it does or that it can or that it will.

This is very important.

But here’s the deal: I do remember driving home from that coming-out meeting with my parents in April 1993. Unlike that little gay baby, I don’t remember what I was wearing, but I remember asking myself very clearly and distinctly:

What am I going to do with all this personal power I have just given to my own Self?

I think about this all the time.

I wish you all, today and for the days to come, a very Happy Pride.

Some Guy Says is written by Robert Arleigh White and distributed via Substack twice a month — give or take — and benefits mightily from the editorial support provided by Canetha Dodd — to whom and for which I am truly grateful.

You can subscribe for FREE!!

But…

Please consider a paid subscription. It supports this work and creates opportunities for others. Paid subscriptions start at just $5/month! Woohoo!

I’m telling you this because there is a lot of rough language in this story...like...a lot...and Mother was a very severe person. She didn’t tolerate foolishness of any kind. She in particular did not care for anything that contained what she called “language.”

Also important to know: in my growing up years I worked really hard to get a laugh out of her. When I did, it was a Real Gold Star Prize Event! But when I didn’t, she would put her hands on her hips and snarl, “Oh! You are just like your father!”

I wonder, What was that even supposed to mean?

Mother figures prominently in a lot of my stories. It occurred to me at some point that she was often cast in the role of Buffoon. I wondered about this, too. Was that supposed to be my way of getting back?

Later it came upon me that in all my stories about her, she always had the punch line, that moment of saving grace, the piece that made the whole thing work out, the line that brought everyone back to the table.

Far from being the Buffoon, she was the Hero.

Always.

Anyways...

This happened 25 years ago on May 17, 2000, and every word of it is true.

I had just gotten on as the Executive Director at the Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville. It was a Real Big Deal Job, and for that reason I was invited to be a Celebrity Chef at the Miracle on Ashley Street, the Clara White Mission’s annual community fundraiser.

For well more than a hundred years, the Mission’s mission has been “to serve the less fortunate.” Every year the Mission invited “local celebrities” to feed a long line of mostly homeless souls in front of their downtown Jacksonville location on Ashley Street.

“Mama, Mama! Look at me! I’m a celebrity!”

On this day, I parked in an untoward part of downtown because the whole of Ashley Street had been covered by a huge tent to accommodate the food, the speakers, the band, the tables, the people. So many people.

I was on my way when I saw these two guys on opposite corners of Broad Street at Ashley. The light changed. They crossed the street. They passed each other, and they kept going.

Suddenly, when they got to their opposite corners, this one guy inexplicably turned to the other guy and yelled at the top of his lungs, “Hey motherfucker! Don’t you fuckin’ disrespect me in my own fucking neighborhood! I will fuck you up!”

The second guy was silent. Just kept moving.

I thought to myself, Take a note, Bob – this has nothing to do with you so keep your head down, stay invisible, just keep moving.

But then the Yelling Man turned to me and very calmly said, “I’m sorry, man. Sorry you had to hear that.”

Like a reflex, I blurted, “Well, I’m sorry you felt compelled to say it!” In some ways, I am my mother’s son after all.

Yelling Man: It’s just that I hate this fucking city so much.

Me [another reflex]: Oh – sounds like you must not be from here. Where are you from?

YM: Chicago.

Me: How long have you been here?

YM: Four years.

Now we are walking together.

Me: How’s it going?

YM: Not well, man, not well.

Me: Why’s that?

YM: It’s because I’m not doing what I am supposed to be doing.

I know, I know – I’m deep in this now.

Me: What are you supposed to be doing?

YM: I am supposed to be preaching the word of God and winning souls to Jesus Christ, but I hate this fucking city too much. What about you – what are you doing here?

Me [after a pause]: OH! I’m on my way over here to Clara White, there’s a big lunch happening today, and...

He cut me off.

YM [Yelling again]: GODDAMMIT! That is just exactly what I am talking about! Nobody ever tells me a Fucking Thing! Fuck this city!

Me: Whoa! Pal! This is so not a problem! In fact, why don’t you come with me, and lunch will be on me today.

We trudged over to the Mission and, right or wrong, I stuck him in the homeless people line because, well, I just figured. Then I checked myself in. The Mission folk gave me a Celebrity Chef apron and a name tag: BOB.

Mama, Mama! Look at me!

I was shown to my spot dishing up shrimp and grits. In line next to me was the incoming Mayor, the incoming City Council President, the incoming Sheriff, and on and on. All the muckety-mucks.

Mama, Mama! I’m a Celebrity Chef!

Before too long the Yelling Man came through the line with an outstretched hand holding a paper plate. He looked at me and then at my name tag. “Your name is Bob?”

Me: Yes.

YM: My name is Michael.

Me: Nice to meet you, Michael!

We shuffled ladles and plates and shook hands.

Michael: It’s nice to meet you, Bob. Hey Bob – you know what? I think you are nicest motherfucker in the whole goddam city!

Me: Oh! Gosh! Thank you!

Michael: And you know what else? Ima tell all these other motherfuckers!

Me: Oh! Wow! So! Okay...!

Michael: Don’t you worry! Ima do it!

And he did. I saw him lean into John the Mayor and whisper something and point to me. John looked confused. He did it again with Matt the City Council President. Same thing, same reaction. Nat the Sherriff. Same thing. And so on down the line.

A while later, Michael came back through the line for seconds.

Michael: Hey Bob! I did it!. I told all these motherfuckers that you’re the nicest one, and I mean it. I mean it! I appreciate you!

Me [Big Gulp]: Thanks...!

Now, I like this story, I think it is a good story. I like to tell it, and I tell it a lot. I’m telling you now! In fact, I would go so far as to say this might even be my signature story. When I die, I want my tombstone to read, Here Lies the Nicest Motherfucker in the Whole Goddam City!

Anyway...

I wondered if I hadn’t told this story too much because a couple of years later I came home from work to find a package wrapped in brown paper tied with twine with my name scrawled on it in heavy black marker: BOB.

This is what it was:

See that? That’s signed by the mayor!

Well...come to find out that not only had the mayor not heard the story, but he hadn’t signed the certificate. Instead, my friend Melissa had heard the story, photoshopped the mayor’s signature from something that had been in the newspaper back when nobody even knew what photoshopping was, and made the certificate.

It looked So Real that for awhile I believed it was!

Mama, mama!

By chance I ran into His Honor the Mayor, and I told him the story. When I got to the part about the certificate, he looked at me and said, “I know where this is going, Bob, and I’m not going to sign that certificate…but…I will initial the back.”

And so he did!

And so it was that with all of this – and an initialed fake certificate – I headed over to my folks’ house to tell my mother all about the Miracle on Ashley Street.

“Now Mom, I really need to tell you this story, but it might be hard for you to hear all of it, so just hang with me to the end, and I think you’ll be okay, okay?”

She was dead quiet — expressionless — the whole way through. With every Fuck that came out of my mouth, I got more nervous, a little sweaty. I don’t remember that it had ever taken this long to tell that story. When I finally got to the end, I handed her the certificate. She held it her hands for a good long time.

Then she looked up at me and said, “Well. It seems to me that that is a story about kindness.”

Then she winked, “And you got a certificate!”

See what I mean?

Happy Mother’s Day, Mama. I miss you.

Please read this part, too!

Some Guy Says is written by Robert Arleigh White and distributed via Substack twice a month…give or take.

Special thanks to Canetha Dodd for editorial support and to Lauren Fincham for content support, encouragement, validation and verification!

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So I’ve been thinking a lot about forgiveness lately.

A long time ago I remarked to my friend, Valerie – and I may have reported here – that the big lessons of my 20s were going to be about anger and forgiveness.

And here I am – nearly 70 – and I struggle with anger and forgiveness to this very day.

Because...people. You know?

Oh how I wish my big lessons had rather revolved around what to do with all this money I have laying around, but...there is no money laying around so here I am, all stuck up with anger and forgiveness.

See, something happened last weekend at the bookstore. A lady – I am going to call her Goneril after one of the daughters in King Lear who is variously described as jealous, tragic, ruthless and insincere...and plus besides which, IMHO, Goneril is just about the singularly most unattractive name to be found in all of Shakespeare – cut in line and demanded a seat. I told her I would be right with her when I finished helping the couple ahead.

Well, I guess that was the wrong answer. She needed me to see in that moment how special she was because, I guess, she didn’t see it herself, and so things went quickly from bad to worse.

Yeah.

You know...I actually wrote out a whole blow-by-blow for you about what she said and what I did and then what happened and...well...I realized...that’s not really the point.

And plus besides which...writing about it put me right back in a sour spot. It did not help.

But.

I do want you to know that she was wearing this jacket:

Isn’t that always the way? It’s always some whackadoo with a peace sign working to get under your skin…before you just usher them in.

Whatever.

The point is...she was dreadful, she pissed me off, I lost myself, felt very strongly that I deserved an apology, fantasized about how that should sound and about how forgiving I was going to be prepared to be (or not) when I got it, realized that wasn’t going to happen in any case, and let that just ratchet me up even more.

And actually, that’s not the point at all either. Nothing about this line of thought is good. Or useful. Not really.

Now...I know all the things, right? I know not to take things like this personally. We’d not been in contact with each other for as long as a minute before things turned ugly, so her words, though directed at me, almost certainly could not have been about me. She probably came in with something going on and I was...just some guy in front of her in that moment.

That’s probably a part of what went wrong for me: the title of this Substack notwithstanding, I am rarely “just some guy.” I am Robert Arleigh White.

But/And…

That also did not serve me well as it did me no real good to be angry in that moment because, I mean, being angry about shit like that, isn’t that just like swallowing poison thinking it will kill the other person or however the fuck that parable goes?

All of that.

BUT!

There must have been something and I must have done it because Goneril’s words really derailed me for, like...hours.

And here I am still thinking about —

What could I have possibly done wrong, what was the matter with me, how did I let this happen, and why-oh-why could I not tend to my internal emotional landscape any better than this...and...well...just between you and me, I hadn’t been down this sad and lonesome path in a mighty long time, and it wasn’t taking me any place I needed to go.

But – also in fairness to my own self – I did not go to acting school for nothing. I mean, I am in total and vivid contact with my emotional life at all times.

At all times.

Still. I thought, Well, I need to get over it, get over myself, get over her. Maybe I just, you know, forgive her in my sad and bitter little heart and...move on.

That’s what got me to thinking about forgiveness. What is that really? It’s been my central struggle for 50 years, and I’m not sure I understand it any better.

I really don’t know…at all.

I mean...when someone asks you for forgiveness...aren’t they just looking to have some ease for themselves, for their own pain? Aren’t they asking you to do The Work so that they can just go hippety-hop-hop along on their own little bunny trails feeling so good and snuggly about themselves? It seems to me that, when people ask for forgiveness (which frankly happens rather less often than I would prefer) or when I ask for it myself, we just want to get out from under something: a relational infraction, an embarrassing mishap, a tough spot, an unheralded transformation, a real tragedy.

Even so – unlike the guy I was in my 20s – I am not sure that I understand what forgiveness...accomplishes. The thing that happened still happened. The trust that broke is still broken. The hurt is still defining.

Here’s a story for you: there was something I struggled with for a really long time, something wrong that I had done. I knew I had to ask forgiveness. When I worked up the nerve to approach my friend to ask him to forgive me, he said a truly astounding thing: Oh! I forgave you for that a long time ago.

So there is that. I mean, it can be done, right?

Again: I know I know I know – when we forgive others, it is more for ourselves than it is for the other person.

I had a therapist once who suggested that forgiveness is like a switch: you just flip it.

Umm...no.

Let me tell you about that switch: it is amazing, isn’t it, how we lose ourselves so easily in a moment and how deliberately and tenderly we have to find our way back.

Ever since my parents passed 14 years ago, I have felt a real connection, a real closeness to them. I feel their presence around me – it is benign and encouraging and comforting.

Usually.

But you know...growing up with adult children of alcoholics as parents is no easy trick, and – please forgive me, but – I feel much closer to them now that they’re gone. Now that they are gone, I am able to be truly grateful – so grateful – for them. They really did teach me that, at the end of the day, love really does win.

Anyway.

Every now and again, I’ll be doing something – usually something pretty mundane and task oriented like making the bed or folding the laundry – when out of nowhere some bitter memory of my dad will pop up and I think to myself, Oh Great! Now I have to stop what I am doing and forgive YOU all over again.

In full-on fairness, I’m quick to remember, too, that in their locked lives and from their own highly proscribed perspectives, they had to sling a lot of forgiveness at me, too.

Like.

A lot.

So. This forgiveness thing. It’s not a switch.

So.

Back to the point…

How did Goneril get under my skin with so much ease? Or is “Why?” a better question? Surely you can see that this thing that I am writing has nearly nothing to do with her. Why am I not more on top of filing this away, putting this aside, throwing out this trash? Why am I supposed to forgive? And what am I forgiving?

“Oh hey, Goneril! Nice jacket! Having a rough day? I forgive you.” Like…what?

This is my problem.

So, I started looking into it.

One teacher says, Forgive and forget. Another says, Forgive...never forget.

In her show, “Jesus Is Magic,” Sarah Silverman – who, near as I can tell, as a Jewish atheist, is truly doing the lord’s work – says of forgiveness: “Jesus is magic!” with jazz hands.

So good!

Then I found this –

“What if forgiveness isn’t about absolving the other person? What if it’s simply about no longer allowing their behavior to have power over you? What if forgiveness is just the act of saying: I’m no longer willing to participate in your bullshit?” – Nadia Bolz-Weber

So?

This is where I landed: I am not available to participate in this bullshit with you. I wish you safe travels.

I know. I’ll work on it.

That said, writing about forgiveness and thinking about Goneril made me sour all over again.

So?

My bedroom window is open, and I can hear the jazz from Little Jumbo. I wander over there, find a great seat, and listen. My shoulders bob, my ears are tickled and thrilled, my eyes are closed.

I see my friend Andy – we have a funny and sweet conversation. I come back home. I walk Bella. I go to bed. I think about my gratitude list.

Getting shed of my sour self, it seems, has an awful lot to do with gratitude. And with being...present. Sometimes, for me anyway, presence needs to be engineered. You know? Intentional. Other times it’s just a shift in focus.

But always, as the Buddhists say, It is a practice. Not a switch.

So what if, in practice, forgiveness becomes an act of lifting myself off the cross of Why, in all of this, am I so broken? What if this forgiveness practice means I start with myself?

I’m not divine. I live inside a sack of skin. I am driven — and sometimes untethered — by exotic appetites and painful longings and needless worry and consternation and by finding real delight and exploring the beauty of the world around me and discovering the supremacy of character I see every day in the people I love...and in the people I am learning to love.

I do think the whole point of being inside this sack is to have the full experience, you know? Taste all the flavors, see all the colors, hear all the sounds, and feel all the things: love and wonder and trust and betrayal and anger and forgiveness. I am listening to later-life Joni Mitchell who still teaches us that it takes Both Sides Now – Up and Down, Give and Take, Win and Lose…and still we really don’t know…at all.

I do not wish to put those things away. I just want to get to the heart of it all.

Some Guy Says is written by Robert Arleigh White and distributed via Substack twice a month — give or take — and benefits mightily from the editorial support provided by Canetha Dodd — to whom and for which I am truly grateful.

All images in this post are mine unless otherwise credited.

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Oh Lordy!

I thought I had posted this piece already, but I have trolled through all the other posts, and I just don’t see it.

So.

In case I missed something and you have heard this all before, I apologize.

Truth to tell, I know I have shared this in almost every single RAWTalk I have ever done because I think it is just that important.

So maybe that’s what’s got me confused.

Oh well.

I need to say quickly that it is tricky business to write about gratitude. So much of what there is to say — all the stuff I’m grateful for — can sound like bragging. Truth is, a lot of what there is to be grateful for isn’t just handed to us. Some of it…a big chunk of it…can be hard won, come from a down-and-out place, or happen after we’ve had the sense and the stuffing and the shit kicked right out of us.

And that is why gratitude is often called a practice. It doesn’t always come easily or naturally….until it does.

Know what I mean?

Here we go.

My gratitude story – my gratitude practice – re-wired my brain and made things that I thought were unimaginable or unattainable possible.

It started out one lonesome night during the pandemic, like, in 2020 or 01.

See, my eyes flop open every night at 3am. In those days, I would wake up to an anxiety ridden panic. My interior monolog would be horrific. I would say things to myself that you would not say to your worst enemy.

Like:

Jesus Christ, Bob – how did you get to be so fuckin’ fat anyway? No idea? Really? Well, I’ll tell you– it’s cuz you’re stupid! And you know what else? It’s not a secret! Everybody knows you are fat AND you are stupid: everybody everybody everybody knows!

Bim Bam Boom Done.

See what I mean?

And that’s just, like, one example.

Sheesh!

So one night, I woke up, and I was really going to town on my wretchedness when out of nowhere I felt this voice:

Stop! Just stop!

Breathe.

Beathe some more.

Ok. So.

Now…looky here…you are just not allowed to talk to yourself like that..ok little Buddy? You just can’t.

Got it?

So here’s what we are going to do instead —

Where are you — not existentially, but literally — right now?

Me: Me? Well, I am in my warm and snuggley little bed...and...I mean, I am a gay man...so…it’s pretty.

Voice: And?

Me: And my little dog is a-snooze in her pretty little bed right beside me.

Voice: Exactly right! So! Where in the whole of the cosmos would it be better for you to be right now?

Me: Umm...uh...nowhere?

Voice: Ding Ding Ding! Exactly right again! So! Let’s dig a little deeper. What’s beautiful in your world? What’s working for you?

And so it began. I started thinking about all the things that I was grateful for.

At first it was like trying to crank an old out-of-gas lawn mower with a busted chain. But then I thought of something…and then I thought of something else…and then…there were, like, a lot of thoughts!

I am pretty OCD. I require so much structure that, after two or three nights, I thought: Hey! I should alphabetize this.

So I did.

And to make it a little easier, I anticipated tricky letters. Like Q, right?

— I am grateful for Queens, Queers, and Q-tips!

Cuz you know you gotta have them!

A lot of you who are reading this — you are on my list, too. I call it my Love and Light List.

Over time, I saw that my list of all the things and situations and people I was grateful for was...well…very like the way I was starting to think about my life: beautiful and thrilling and fun and thoughtful and exotic and creative…and important. Especially when I realized I was grateful for people who had, like, really dicked me over or pissed me off…because, you see…I had learned something from them. Or like when I discovered I could be grateful for things I’d done poorly my own self or to some disastrous effect of my own making or with some falseness of pride or intention or some other personal and petty bullshit. Because I was able to move forward a little bit.

These are gifts.

Lately, I’ve grown a little less structured and a little more open and immediate. I think more about what I am grateful for today.

Today I am grateful for

— the colder weather (I do not care for the heat, I love the cold, and today was perfect!)

— the bright sunshine (on a cold day? Nothing better!)

— a super fun visit with my friend Emily at our place, the Little Jumbo

— OH! the Little Jumbo

— the fact that spring happened, like, overnight — it’s as stunning here as fall

— Trader Joe’s (y’all! those French Gallette Butter Cookies? Listen to me: Best things I have ever put in my mouth — ever. Do NOT make me say it again…Best. Things. Ever. I am not even kidding…although…I did have a southern pecan cookie at a coffee shop in Murray Hill in Jacksonville that came, like, so so close)

— a secret about my sister that I canNOT wait to share – it is a super good one (scroll to the very bottom to see…!)

— the courage and bravery and determination and creativity and humor of resistors

— my amazing job at the Battery Park Book Exchange and Champagne Bar

— these instruments

— food

— community

— Charlotte

— swear words, swearing, and cussing. I am serious...I love swearing…and I have to say, I am good at it. My swearing, generally speaking, is not warranted; it is gratuitous…know what I mean? See, in a real situation, I think I conduct myself pretty well, but elsewise…swearing feels as good going out as those cookies taste coming in. (BTW…I’ll tell you what does annoy me about swearing, though: it’s those writers who don’t know the differences among profanity, vulgarity and obscenity, and — while I myself am grateful for, and even thrive upon, this highly nuanced understanding — if you don’t know the differences, then I think we’d all be grateful for your silence in the cursing space)

— and Bella. Oh Bella. Bella Bella Bella. We did not pick each other, you and me, but here we are, and it’s pretty good, wouldn’t you say?

— Special Shout Out to Kevin who has such a heart for dogs and who takes care of Bella when I’m having a long day at the Store: Bella and I are both so grateful

— I will always on a daily basis be grateful for my family – my siblings

— my most-dearest friends

— and alla my straight boyfriends

— my big fat body which serves me so well and which, by the way, has lost 16 pounds since October – Go Me! I am very grateful for that!

Note to Self: Always be grateful for your body — never say harsh things about it. It is a miracle that always does things to sustain and inform and uplift you that you can’t ever even imagine or know

— my head of white hair and every strand that valiantly still holds on

— seasons and nature and the world around us

— art, beauty, music

— ohmigosh! so much more!

I am also grateful, too, for tough times, hard luck, tricky situations, and difficult people.

Because…people.

Am I right?…!

I used to say — and I still do — that people, generally speaking, are no damn good. And by people, I mean you AND me. And, as no-damn-good-people, we require kindness and compassion from ourselves and others at all times. And because kindness and compassion are required of us/you — and I see you; I know you are dishing it out all the time — we must tend to ourselves with great and deliberate and intentional care; elsewise, the well runs dry, the saw grows dull, and we run the risk of turning into no-damn-good-people our own selves.

Believe me when I tell you: I know this is so.

Taking great care means, among other things, being grateful for everything.

Including — and especially — people.

See, another of the things I have learned – and that I know for sure – is that if you are paying any attention to anything at all there is ALWAYS something there that is for you.

For you.

The worst things that have ever happened to me have yielded my very best blessings.

So?

Were they the worst things? Really?

Well. I am old-ish now, so there have been, like, a LOT of worst things placed along my merry path. And, at least in my case as I get older, some of those things get worser and worser…BUT…the beautiful thing is that I just don’t care nearly as much and THAT, my dear sweethearts, is a real gift to be grateful for!

Here’s a story:

It has been the longing of my heart to live here in the mountains of Western North Carolina since I last lived here when I was five years old. My mama’s people, as we in the South like to say, are from here. This is where I feel most at home on the planet. I never thought I could make a life for myself happen here. But I believe with all my heart that my gratitude practice re-wired my brain so that, when the opportunity came along to move here, I didn’t castigate myself for being too stupid or too fat as I had done time and time over and again.

Instead, I jumped!

Well. That opportunity was wrapped up in a job that famously did not work out.

Like…at all.

Again…not a secret.

BUT

That job got me here, and it set me on a path that allows me to work and serve in creative spaces I could never have elsewise imagined for myself.

So I am grateful for the purpose in my life that that job unwittingly created and served.

AND, you know what? As a function of that work, someone said to me just today: You are a real artist.

How am I not to be grateful for that?

Beyond that…I do not care. Show’s over, folks: move on.

Know what I mean?

Be grateful.

Sometimes, I miss the Great Big Life I had in Jacksonville, but mostly when I think about that, I am grateful for the experience. And I smile. Mostly.

But —

In every way imaginable —

I don’t live there anymore.

Move on. Be grateful.

Here…well…nobody knows me. Not really. Charlotte used to say, People always want to know what you are really like. In answer, Maria once said, What you see is what you get. And she’s right. There’s not much more than that.

Mrs. Parker once said, “There is less here than meets the eye!”

In the mountains, there’s no context and no history and, thus, no real expectation. I inhabit a wide open space, a blank(er) canvas. There is a whole lot of freedom for creating something wholly new and mine. I am perfectly placed. It’s unfamiliar here for me, too, so sometimes, yeah, I fumble about and fuck up, but it doesn’t matter nearly so much. It seems to me that we are liable to fumble about and fuck up wherever we are anyway.

What a gift it is to fumble about! What a blessing to fuck up where the accountability is just and only (or mostly) to myself!

I mean, I suppose that’s true regardless. What’s that old expression? Oh yes: Wherever you go, there you are!

How many people get to know that at this time of life?

Lordy! I never planned to live to be this old, and sometimes I think I need a new plan. Trust me: it is very difficult to make new plans in old places.

FWIW — I will be 70 this year and so here I am and here I will stay.

As I have written here before, it has been pointed out to me that I have never been in a situation in my life that didn’t work out. Well, you know what? A LOT of things didn’t work out my way, didn’t work out for me at all, but — honest to God — if all of the things I had wanted, say, as a young man had come to be, I would be dead or in jail.

So? Did things work out or not?

Right now, I have to say that I know I am a highly privileged white man. I have a built in expectation that things will work out. Right? A lot of people do not have that. I get to think about how I will use my privilege. Not everyone gets to. And of those who can, not many will.

So?

Check this out: I am the weekend host at the Battery Park Book Exchange and Champagne Bar. Say that five times real fast and know that I love this work!

At first, I thought this would be a stopgap until a “real job” came along. But…this is a Real Job AND It Is Perfect for me! I work three days a week. I am on my feet running the whole time — getting those steps in and shedding LBs! I am fostering a focus on other people — customers, co-workers, bosses and owners like our new leader, Matt.

In the early days of this work, well, it was tough. Service work is hard. I was…surprised. Emily needed to remind me, “It’s hospitality, Bob, not hostility.”

Jesus.

Whatever.

I invented a word for my attitude: hostipitality.

Just the other day, Em said, “You’ve really come a long way since you started,” and — Folks! — that made my heart sing because Emily is the standard, she is The Best. Every single day, she is somebody’s hero, more often than not mine. It’s not a secret.

I’m not the best, and I still have so much to learn…but…I am so grateful for her.

And plus besides which…

I had no idea how hard on your body service work is. And I mean…it is. The first week, I thought I would die. The second week, I hoped I would. Then I got great shoes with inserts! So grateful! Now I am strong and I can wear whatever shoes I please!

So grateful!

A long time ago, my finance guy said, You will need to work til the day you die, and you will need to live a really long time! But here I am: I get up when I wake up — usually by 7am, but not always. I put on whatever suits. I’m growing my hair out and I have this fierce undercut because I want to be able to tie it up at the nape of my neck in time for my birthday because I am vain like that. I stick shit in it — not like on a Keith-Richards-like-level, but…who knows? I know I sometimes present as ridiculous. So? Who have I got to please? I run my little errands and do my little Bob things and still I show up right on time in unexpected places because I don’t have a board of directors and I’m not putting anyone’s kids through college.

If I were retired, this is just exactly how I would live.

AND I get report to you.

So grateful!

But there is more —

Working in the service industry also informs my work as an end of life caregiver more than just about anything else. It calls me to a different way of showing up and being present because it places me right inside my body.

I oftentimes work on gratitude with someone who is passing, whose body is letting go. We create peace and ease for that body in order for the spirit to expand, swell, and move. That’s the goal anyway.

I learned to do this from having been a long distance runner. There was a time in my life when I used to run 70 miles a week. Three miles in, your body just takes over and your mind is free! Free to wander or wonder or solve or roam or imagine or aspire or just be available to see the day in all of its color or listen to bird’s songs. I could expand and swell and move.

We’re at that time in the spring when it is dead quiet when Bella and I first leave the house for her morning constitutional. Then there is a little tweet over here, a little trill over there, a caw, a honk, a screech, and…what’s that? A hoot?! And suddenly the whole neighborhood is alive with birdsong!

How can you not hold that space in gratitude and awe?

That said, it’s true that I wrecked my knees from all that running. So? I got me some new knees! See? —

Here’s the thing —

I know that everything that has happened – all that running, walking, crying, crawling, loving, raging, step by step, inch by inch, mile by mile, victory by victory, loss by loss – has brought me to the place where I am literally (in my town, in my home) and spiritually (in my space, in My Home). So loss is not failure; it is just good information for you.

And you get to be grateful for that, too.

Remember: if you are paying this much attention [snap your fingers Right NOW] to anything in any moment, there is something there for you.

For you.

I still wake up at 3am. I roll over and say to my oh-so-smart speaker, Hey Google, what time is it?

Google: It’s 2:59am.

Me. Oh. Ok… OH! It’s gratitude time! Thank you, thank you!

And I practice.

If you are reading this, I am deeply grateful for you. It is not trite, it is truth.

So?

I am curious — and I would love to know: what are you grateful for today?

Some Guy Says is written by Robert Arleigh White and distributed via Substack twice a month — give or take — and benefits mightily from the editorial support provided by Canetha Dodd — to whom and for which I am truly grateful — and also, as it happens, from my sister Doris who is the recipient of this year’s Arts Educator Award from the Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville. I am giddy with pride!

All images in this post are mine unless otherwise credited.

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Earlier last week, Some Guy Says attempted to commemorate my first live Dead show – March 2, 1992 – and I got pulled in a different direction.

Between then and now, I’ve thought about what a really big story that first GD adventure was...and continues to be.

Like, really big.

I guess it started way back in the early 70s when I was in high school. I remember listening to the Grateful Dead on the radio, but it was this album cover for their live Europe ‘72 album that called out to me.

It was a three-record set, and I could buy it at the military PX at Pearl Harbor, so, track for track, it was, like, the cheapest record I owned.

I would put those records on the family stereo hi-fi in the living room, and when it got to that third disc with all that experimental stuff and all those really strange sounds, my mother would holler at me to “Turn that noise off!”

Later, when I started up at Oklahoma Baptist University, I made a good friend in a floor-mate, Mark, who was a full-on Deadhead. He’d been to a whole bunch of shows.“There is nothing like a Grateful Dead show,” he used to say.

And he was right.

Mark was from Lake Charles, Louisianna. He had this amazing drawl that made all his stories seem impossibly colorful and romantic and exotic.

Most evenings, we would scrounge together our loose change for gas for his gretbiggo jalopy and go riding around Pottawatomie County until the fuel gauge said, Time to head back, fellas.

Pott. County, as we liked to call it (we thrilled at the baseball caps we found emblazoned with Pott. County Farmer across the front), is about as flat as can be. Fortunately, the steeple of Raley Chapel on the OBU campus was the highest point of reference in all of Pott. County. It didn’t matter how far astray we went, we could always find our way by heading toward that steeple.

Mark had an 8-track player and plenty of Grateful Dead tapes. I remember that we listened particularly to Mars Hotel over and over and over again: “China Doll,” “Loose Lucy,” “Unbroken Chain.”

I wish I knew how to find Mark today. I would love to tell him that I finally made it to, well, not just one show, but many, many, many. It would be fun to compare notes on all kinds of things, and to hear that wonderful drawl again.

Anyways...fast forward to 1984 or 5. Bobby, whom I’ve written about so much in these pages that you must feel like you know him, and I were roommates. I had the Grateful Dead on the stereo hi-fi in the living room when he came in one afternoon.

“Hey – what’s that you’re listening to?”

“It’s the Grateful Dead!”

“Oh. Well. You need to turn that shit off!”

Shades of my mama!

Well.

Anyway.

Around this time, Bobby and I and, all of us really, fell in with Rick O’Shea who had a riverfront kite store in Jacksonville – KiteRiggers. Rick was at the epicenter of a progressive social scene that flowered like a lotus. Especially astounding when you consider that Rick mostly lived his life as a paraplegic in a wheelchair.

Rick had the longest hair I’d ever seen, and he wore a lot of tie-dye and Guatemalan woven clothes, and you just could not keep up with him.

Try this for an especially ironic trick: say his name out loud and real fast – Rick O’Shea – and imagine the hippiest person ever rolling past you in a wheelchair with a kite!

Beauty!

Rick used to host a wonderful evening every Thursday on the Southbank River Walk there at the Chart House: New Vaudeville Nights. He knew all kinds of performers who would come and show-out for us — a lot of circus types: whip masters and fire eaters, and dancers and jugglers. There were musicians of all sorts. I remember seeing Derek Trucks there when he was a kid – like 10, 11, 12 years old – playing that big red guitar, big as he was! You just knew he was going to be a real big deal someday.

Anyways, as I say, Rick was always on the go-go-go, and one of the places it seemed he was always going off to was a Gateful Dead show. Rick would say, “There is nothing like a Grateful Dead show!”

A quick side note about Rick: He was on his way to a career as a math teacher when he was involved in a terrible car wreck. That’s what landed him in the wheelchair. I want to say he was, like, 19 or something like that. He was the same age as me. Anyway, the doctors told him he had something like seven years to live…at best. Rick had an epiphany that he could waste away in a wheelchair for those seven years OR he could dedicate himself to a full life of happiness and creativity and curiosity, and that, my dears, is just exactly what he did. When he got that purple van with hand controls, there was no stopping him. One night, many some decades after his accident, he went out with friends, partied — I heard he was popping wheelies in his chair — came home, went to bed, and just didn’t wake up.

That’s how you do that.

Oh! I could write pages and pages and pages about Rick O’Shea. I’ll say this: every single memory I have of that man is hilarious! What a gift! Reader’s Digest used to have a column, something like, The Most Unforgettable Character I Ever Knew. For a lot of us in Jacksonville in those days, that character would have to be Rick O’Shea. What a force of energy, joy, creativity.

Anyways...

Rick was the one who got us all excited about going off to see the Grateful Dead.

Now, for those of you unfamiliar, you couldn’t just buy tickets to a Grateful Dead show. There was a whole rigamaroll you had to go through. Tickets were distributed through the Grateful Dead Organization, and — what you may have heard or think about the Grateful Dead notwithstanding — there were rules and they were specific and rigid.

Another side note: I used to wonder — what if the Grateful Dead people joined with the Disney folks to run the world? Everything would be Fun and Clean!

Anyways.

You had to request tickets on a handwritten 3x5 card — date, venue, general seating preference — that you put in an envelope with US Post Office money order. Nothing else would do. You had also to hand address a pre-stamped, number 10 size return envelope which would be sent back to you with either your tickets or, if you were not so lucky, your money order. The envelope COULD NOT have any reference to the Grateful Dead for fear the contents would be stolen. I mean it: you had to do it their way — just so or else!

AND they could not be postmarked before the date that tickets went on sale.

So!

We organized these big mail parties with seasoned Deadheads who made sure we did it all just exactly right, and then we caravaned down to the Main Post Office on King Street in Jacksonville so that our envelopes could be postmarked for 12:01am on the correct day!

I mean, this was just a part of it.

I cannot tell you how thrilling it was to get those first tickets back in the mail! They were Sparkly! Special! And they were for March 2, 1992 at the Omni in Atlanta, GA!

In the meantime, somehow, Bobby and I had also managed to get tickets to see U2 in Miami on March 1.

So! This was to be quite an adventure!

On Sunday, March 1, we drove from Jacksonville to Miami to see U2 on the second night of their North American tour in support of their new album, Achtung Baby!

What a train wreck that was.

It was my first time in Miami, and it was just a mess. The crowd was drunk and vaguely violent, and the band’s performance wasn’t much better. It was real gimmicky and LOUD AS HELL and...from about the third song in…I could not wait for it to be over.

And then it was.

We hopped in the car and drove all the way back to Jax.

The next day, we jumped in with our friends the Walkers to go to Atlanta to see the Grateful Dead. Bobby – whom you already know was not a fan – was not happy about it, and we just about had to kidnap him, kicking and screaming, to get him there.

Those of you in the know know that there’s a whole parking lot scene full up with vendors of all kinds. All kinds. Tents. Vans. Guys scooting around on skate boards with coolers of beer and water and signs that read, What the fuck, it’s only a buck! These were the most hippified people I had seen since I had seen them in my high school days twenty years before. They looked just the same! Where had they been? What did they do during the day? Where did they hang out? Did they have, like, jobs? How did they pay their VISA bills?!

Everything about this crowd was different from the experience in Miami the night before. In place of dark denim and leather jackets and caps, there was color and tie-dye, loose and flowing robes and fun costumes. And shenanigans! People greeted one another like they hadn’t seen each other since the last time or, as I was to discover, the last show. The vibe was all about being kind and supportive – “We can share what we’ve got of yours, ‘cause we done shared all of mine” — demonstrably so. This was not going to be just another concert. It was already a full-on experience that demanded your presence and your authenticity, and we hadn’t even gone inside yet.

We found Rick! He had all these kites, and one in particular – a huge 3-dimensional pink pig that he called Madge – would fly in the parking lot of whatever show he was at to mark his spot. Just like heading toward that steeple in Oklahoma, we followed a trail through the parking lot to that pig!

Inside the hall, all of this was amplified by the anticipation for the show that was about to start. We must have looked like tourists because the people around us wanted to know if this was our first show. Everyone was really sweet – quick to talk, reach out, share some laughs and…stuff…! It was easy and comfortable and fun.

The lights went down and people were on their feet. Suddenly, people went nuts. Bobby was, like, “What happened?” “I don’t know...just...this enormous person just came onstage.” It was Jerry.

After a fair amount of noodling – which, for me, established that there was going to be a whole lot of deep listening going on – the band launched into what had originally been an old English ballad, “Cold Rain and Snow.” Everyone sang along: “Rain and sno-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-ow. Run me out in the cold rain and snow.” This was church.

There were lots of things about that first show that were fascinating. The commitment to pristine sound. The density of the light show by the artist Candace Brightman. The crowd. I guess the biggest take away was...the listening. Deep listening among the musicians and between the band and the audience. I’d never seen that level of participation and interaction and awareness at a concert – the audience was easily half of the experience. It was ecstatic, contemplative, fun, and truly beautiful.

And I’d never thought of the Dead as, like, a dance band but there we were, on our feet the whole time. At three hours, the evening went long — though it never seemed so — and we were sent out with the rousing Chuck Berry classic, “Around and Around.” Back in the parking lot, we were grateful for the vendors selling waters and hot brown food – all kinds, Mexican, Chinese, African – out of the trunks of cars. On some level, I’m sure this was a health department nightmare, but – damn! – it was all good!

Back at the car, I crawled into the back seat and listened while Landon and Bobby exchanged reactions to the show, the meaning of it all, how it felt, the whole way home.

Since then, Bob and I and lots of other friends have been to so many Grateful Dead shows and spin-offs: Furthur, the Other Ones, the Dead, Dead and Company, Wolf Brothers, Phil and Friends, Ratdog, and so on. I have so many stories. That time when all these Deadheads swarmed the DC Metro System and got the route changed! That time when we lost Bernard, and then he got onto the very subway car we were riding on the very next afternoon! That time we stumbled upon all of our friends at the show in Orlando. That time I got healed of a lower GI issue during drums and space (I swear). That time Rick lost control of his wheelchair, and I stopped him from flying over a steep curb. We hadn’t found him ahead of time, and here he came hurtling down a steep walkway. I stepped in front and slammed my hands on the arms of that wheelchair. He looked up and saw me for the first time, “Nice save, Bob!”

That time when I met Jerry.

Not too long ago, I was talking with Bobby about those amazing outings – each one, just exactly perfect. Know what he said? “Yeah…there is nothing like a Grateful Dead show.”

Jerry used to say that the Dead were like licorice or butter milk. Not everyone likes those things, but the ones who do, really, really do!

All these memories – and many, many more – came up in January when rhythm guitarist Bob Weir passed away. Among other things, it occurs to me that, while there is nothing like a Grateful Dead show, perhaps it runs a risk of being even less so going forward.

Landon postulates that perhaps the Grateful Dead could be like the Yankees baseball team. You know? They didn’t fold up when Babe Ruth died. Nor did the Dead when Jerry – the heart of the thing – passed away in 1995. The music is just too good, and that community is just too strong.

The New Yorker suggested that a Dead show is such a uniquely American phenomenon – featuring, as it does, all kinds of traditional American idiomatic music – that one concert ought to be holographically enshrined in the Smithsonian.

I’m just waiting to see what happens next.

Some Guy Says is written by Robert Arleigh White and distributed via Substack twice a month — give or take — and benefits mightily from the editorial support provided by Canetha Dodd.

You can subscribe for FREE!!

Please consider a paid subscription. It supports this work and creates opportunities for others. Paid subscriptions start at just $5/month! Woohoo!

It hit late, but it hit hard.

It’s actually a fun memory – a great story – in what has been, thus far, a tricky, dare I say treacherous, year.

See…it all started on New Year’s Day.

I mean…obviously…right?

I have a superstition that the way you begin something – like your day, or the week, or the first of the month or the year – is going to characterize that same period of time going forward.

That’s why it is always important to start something new from a good place.

That is why I start everyday with my gratitude practice.

After that, I set some intentions for my day: I am going to be compassionate, I am going to engage as a deep listener, I will be brave in the causes of righteousness.

You know. Stuff like that.

Then I do some in-bed stretches and twists. Then I roll over, and as soon as my little feet hit the ground, the first words spoken out of my mouth are something like:

Did that fucker die last night?

And that, I suspect, may be my whole problem.

Ok? So. Anyway.

On January the First I rolled through this routine, said something aloud and truly awful (in hopes of setting up the year for some really great things), and then realized immediately that I was sick.

I usually run temps that are low. Around 97.7 is normal for me. On the First Day of the New Year, first thing in the morning, I was sporting a fever of 102.

Oh lord, please don’t let me be sick all year long!

After shivering away all the livelong day and ladling fluids of all sorts down my throat, I took myself that afternoon to an urgent care center. They told me my oxygen levels were really low, and they wanted me to go to the hospital.

I declined but promised to see my regular primary care doctor the next day which is what I did.

At the doctor’s office – actually, it was a masked meeting in the parking lot – it was confirmed that my fever was still high, and my oxygen was still low. They ran a bunch of tests.

Flu!

I was astounded! I’m a total vaxxer, but this flu is a total badass, so? There you go.

She wanted to put me in the hospital, but again I declined. I know, I know – not always the sharpest tool in the shed – but I promised to pick up an oximeter when I ran by the pharmacy to get my prescriptions and to monitor my oxygen over the weekend and blah blah blah…

Which is what I did.

Over the course of the next week or so, I got marginally better.

And then Renee Good was murdered in Minneapolis, and the government lied to us about it. And then all I could feel was anger.

I know, I know...old news now.

And I think that anger just made me sicker.

But then that anger grew into a kind of rage that I believe was a real help to me. In fact…I think it burned off my fever.

See, here’s the thing –

I’m thinking back to long, long ago when I heard Dr. Joyce Brothers say, like, on the Mike Douglas Show or Merv Griffin or something like that (remember those sweet old names and those tender-er days? Oh lord, my brain is chasing Totie Fields and Marty Allen and Buddy Rich and…oh please god just make it stop!):

“You can’t hold in anger — it will destroy you. And you can’t let it explode — it will destroy others.”

You can look it up – she really did say it, and I really do remember it!

I mean…I remembered Totie Fields…right?

So? What do you do?

I post my rage on Facebook. Someone assured me that this was a way-ok part of my resistance practice, and I’m, like, really good with that…like…really…

But…

A lot of people whom I have loved are not.

Oh well.

OH! Here I should say, too, that, on the Meyers-Briggs Personality Test, I always test out as an INFJ. Always.

Introverted Intuitive Feeling Judging.

Intuitive, Feeling, and Judging – most people who know me get that. Certainly Feeling and Judging are great sources for [my] Frustration and Anger. So…check and check.

(I know I am speaking way-too broadly about personality types...but...you get the idea.)

The Introverted part throws folks. And I get it. I’m on stage a lot, but — particularly with the work I did with Charlotte — that was us being ourselves, you know? We were not inhabiting roles. In fact, I don’t think we were ever interpreting or imagining someone else’s lived experience. It was pretty open, accessible, and vulnerable stuff — and scary (…like…so scary…) so I understand that folks might get me as extroverted and available…but…the action – validation, examination, reflection, rewards and punishments – all of that happens in my head. And, in spite of all you may have seen or read, I am kind of remote.

Pretty much.

And plus besides which...I went to acting school and lived my whole life in the arts, so I think it is safe to say that I’m in vivid contact with my emotional life.

At all times.

Anyway, my whole gratitude practice was born out of some heinous conversation I was having with myself about my innate wretchedness. All of that was happening inside my head!

SO...

My point is...

Among the characteristics of INFJs is our shared belief that everyone else sees the whole rest of the world exactly the same way we do, because...why wouldn’t you?

And THAT, my dears, can also inform some Frustration and Anger!

You can take that to the bank.

Anyway.

Fast forward from Joyce Brothers to these days.

I think a lot of you know that I pay close attention to Dr. Rick Diamond whose daily posts on Instagram are a real help to me. He is one of my teachers. Right around the time of Rennee Good’s murder, he said these useful things:

“Sometimes your anger is not letting you know of some unhealed, unintegrated trauma that needs to be fixed. Sometimes your anger is a righteous fire. Sometimes your anger...is an indication that something is not Right. Sometimes that fire is an indication that something needs to change. The good part is that just because you feel the fire doesn’t mean you have to do anything radical or different. Sometimes you can just be the fire and let it work. If it is a righteous fire, it is from your heart.

And it is for you.”

And then later, again regarding the Righteous Fire –

“...it’s not that you just want to burn everything down. It’s that you can tell, you can feel that something is not Right. Don’t put that fire out! It’s a tool. It’s fuel! It’s energy! And what it is telling you is that some boundary has been crossed – your boundary, somebody else’s, some place something is amiss. All of it is a lesson. All of it is a gift. What do you want to do with the fire? See what got crossed that is not okay, and look at it, and say, ‘Teach me what this is.’”

I think the points about which I am angry are right out there in the open for everyone to see. I presume you see what I see, and just exactly the way I see it. I mean, why wouldn’t you?

See what I mean?

Well. Actually. You can trust me when I tell you that…it seems like a lot of people — as I say, people that I have loved — have their own ideas about the world we live in and how it works. Or doesn’t. Or should. Or shouldn’t.

As Dr. Rick says, I am trying to ask, “Teach me what this is.”

Mostly my answer is, “This is some fucked up bullshit!”

Judging, see?

So? I have work to do, and I am trying, Truly. I swear.

Long, long ago, when I was just turning 30 – so, like, a real long time ago – I told a friend that the great lessons of my 20s were going to be wrapped up in Anger and Forgiveness.

I had no idea about the depths and degrees of betrayal and disappointment that lay in wait! And to be clear, I have been the author of some real betrayal and disappointment myself, so...

You see?

So for every decade since, I’ve been working through Anger and Forgiveness. I suspect that if I live long enough, the great lessons of my life will have been Anger and Forgiveness.

Oh lord! Do I really gotta live that long?!

Anyways.

In the middle of all this meditation on Anger, Bobby Weir passed away.

January. What a month.

I was sitting at the bar at the Little Jumbo, playing on my phone and talking with my pal, Emily, who, as both a dear friend and co-worker, knows me pretty well. I think it is safe to say that Em has been privy to more than her fair share of my moments of Anger and Frustration.

So I was grateful she was with me when I read the news. Oh Boy.

“Oh no! Bob Weir has passed away!”

“What?”

“Yeah – no, let me see. I can’t find it anywhere else. Oh. Wait. There it is. Yeah. Fuck.”

That just took the wind out of my sails. I mean...of the whole of the Grateful Dead, wasn’t Bobby, like, the Healthy One? The mountain biker, the weight trainer, the macrobiotic dieter, the meditator?

I mean…fer cryin out loud.

It was hard to be sad at first because I was just too astounded. Since that first show in 1992, I saw 19 more shows before Jerry passed in 1995 and I’m guessing dozens — hundreds? — of Grateful Dead iterations with Bobby at the very core of this special and sacred spirit since then.

As a very, very wise friend from Oklahoma Baptist University days once said, “There is nothing like a Grateful Dead show.”

And, indeed, there is not. And now less so. (More on this in my next post.)

I like to say these shows are like a circus for your very soul. The shows are very like church — or what church ought to be.

(Yes, I am paying attention to that verb tense — see you at the next post!)

Of the Grateful Dead, Joseph Campbell his own self said, and I quote:

“Listen, this is powerful stuff! This is more than music! It turns something on in here [points to the heart]. And what it turns on is life energy. This is Dionysus talking through these kids. It doesn't matter what the name of the god is, or whether it's a rock group or a clergy. It's somehow hitting that chord of realization of the unity of God in you all.”

And then we had an ice storm here in the mountains which was every bit as concerning as a Florida hurricane. Maybe more so since we had, unlike many of my Florida friends, actually been through a Florida hurricane in Helene.

It was dangerous and isolating.

But…I mean…even so…we did have silver and gold puffer jackets for our pooches.

Bella’s is pink. Obviously.

Anyway.

Then Alex Pretti got murdered by the government, and then I just let my anger get the better of me, so then I got the flu again.

See what I mean? See how that can work?

But then, a propos of absolutely nothing I can put my finger on, I had another small relapse of the flu last week

…the hell??!?

This is way more whiny than I want it to be, and plus besides which it isn’t at all the story I meant to tell you. And I know how abrupt it feels to bow away from what I wanted to tell…but…well…that’s just kind of the way anger works, right?

Whatever.

The story I meant to share was about my first Dead show, which really is a fun road trip tale full up with its own spills, chills, and thrills, and I promise I will pick up that thread in the next day or so.

(Honor Bright…because I know I’ve been quiet for quite a while. The 3xflu left me with heavy duty brain fog, so I am blaming that, and hoping for your forgiveness…because it’s not just anger, it’s about forgiveness, too.)

In the meantime, I will leave you with two things.

First, If you are feeling Anger in Hard Times — how are you not? — let that awareness guide you toward the willingness to take positive action. Willingness gets shit done and Action is where the rubber hits the road (so says another of my teachers, John Chappelear…well, John is more elegant than I am, so he probably didn’t say Shit…or Rubber for that matter…but…you get the point).

You already know I post on social media. I also call my representatives once a week. Sometimes, when warranted, oftener. It keeps me from feeling helpless and keeps lit the righteous fire inside of me without burning the whole place down. When I call, I speak slowly, calmly, clearly, politely, and I ask the nice young person who takes my call (I’m old enough to know that anyone who answers that phone is a young person) to read my message back to me and to explain how my representative will get it. It’s ultimately not an unpleasant exchange.

I’m sorry if this sounds goofy or clutchy, but I am reminded Kindness is central to Grateful Dead culture: “Oh oh, all I want to know is: are you kind?” — Uncle John’s Band.

So? Be Kind.

Second – and as the Grateful Dead themselves preached – “If you get confused, listen to the music play.” Here’s a YouTube audio-only link to that first show from 34 years ago today. It was a doozy that changed my life and, again, to quote the Dead, set me “on the golden road to unlimited devotion.”

Heady words indeed, but it’s what I have to offer you right now.

Pro-tip: If you want, listen to the first little bit then skip ahead to the two hour, 11 minute mark for the end of Stella Blue and then get slammed home with some truly righteous rock and roll via the Chuck Berry classic, “Around and Around.” This is ecstatic, joyful music. It is what we need and only fair to share since I led us all down a less-than-merry path to think about our collective Anger issues.

Or mine, anyway.

Bonus – for those who need to know more, here’s a link to an Apple Music playlist I put together for a curious sweetheart. Grateful Dead friends will lament that I left out this or that or included something frivolous…but…hey! It’s My List for this day —

https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/grateful-dead/pl.u-zpm8gtg8eb3

Some Guy Says is written by Robert Arleigh White and distributed via Substack twice a month — give or take — and benefits mightily from the editorial support provided by Canetha Dodd.

You can subscribe for FREE!!

Please consider a paid subscription. It supports this work and creates opportunities for others. Paid subscriptions start at just $5/month! Woohoo!

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Ever since I got back from Norway in August, I’ve been turning over the stories I want to tell you about the wedding that took me there.

But then...you know how it goes...one thing and another...life’s sorrows and challenges.

Time.

So.

It’s been a minute, but I do want you to know about “the wedding of the season.”

That’s what Bobby’s daughter, Mallory, calls it. And I suppose that, on an island with only 700 year-round residents, a wedding with more than 60 guests is a Really Big Deal.

And, as has already been reported here, to have been invited to officiate my best friend’s wedding to his best girl is the honor of my lifetime.

So?

How could I have been so clumsy as to have left my computer — the computer with all my wedding notes, this very computer upon which I am banging out this post right this second — behind?

I ask you...!

AARRGGHH!

In my defense, the deal was sealed late in the day so whatever I had put together on the computer wasn’t really what I would call “cooked” anyway. Once I confirmed and made my peace with the computer’s safe location, I got freed up!

Here’s how it all worked out.

First off – and I think I may have told you – Bobby has been my best friend for more than 40 years. We’ve been up and around life’s curve balls and driven miles and miles on all kinds of adventures and to the tune of — and in search of — so much music!

Also…I’ve known this guy for so long that a lot of people know him as Little Bobby. Among the delights of my life have been those moments with Bob in conversation with someone else only to hear the other person suddenly exclaim, “Oh! You’re Little Bobby!”

At well over six feet tall, Bob carries the mantle of Little Bobby with elegance and grace and cheer. And truth to tell, while we still say Little Bobby in our very close circle, you don’t hear it so much elsewise anymore which makes it all the sweeter when you do!

Secondly — The road to Sonja wasn’t particularly easy or smooth or immediate. Sonja remembers meeting Bobby at a party at Geir’s house when she was a young woman. I get the feeling she may have been smitten then! He remembers her from another party at Geir’s on Kilsund some years later.

So it is a kind of metaphor that Kilsund, Sonja’s hometown, is not a place where you just, you know, show up. It is a hero’s journey of mountains and waters and trees and vast empty spaces to negotiate with buses and cars and boats and people to get there, and all of it is distinctly – and blissfully – not American!

The locale — like the event and the attending party — is something you have to be really intentional about getting to. So it became even more ironic that I showed up without plans, maps, or much of anything in place to guide what was going to happen.

I think it’s fair to say that this kind of thing happens, in my life anyway, more often than not.

After a day and a half of traveling, I was lucky to have been found — well, that’s how it felt — by Eli, Sonja’s sister-in-law, at a remote way-station about an hour from Kilsund. Eli and I hit it off immediately and cheerfully. It wasn’t long before we were engaged in bright conversation about our worlds, our lives and loves, our expectations and aspirations for the wedding, the weekend, more.

Magne, Sonja’s brother, and Eli were my hosts...and you could not have asked for better. There was construction in progress at their place to join two separate houses together as one home.

Another metaphor? Perhaps.

Whatever else, it certainly meant that I had my own wing — bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and terrace — to hide out in.

Hiding out, for me, is important. See, I always-always test out as an INFJ on the Myers-Briggs Personality Test. No one believes this: “You? Introverted?” Yes! Don’t just take it from me; click on the link and check it out — especially number 6!

This is important information because Bobby was excited about his achievement of securing Eli and Magne as my hosts and their house as my safe space. Big Score! But I wasn’t so sure about a three-day party with people I didn’t know and whose language I might not be able to speak and with no escape plan like when you have your own car and you can just bow out and disappear.

Oh Lord! I hope my neuroses didn’t make me burdensome! I like to think of myself as (as has been said) a “fucking delight,” but…but I also know that (as has also been said) a “little bit can go a mighty long way!”

In the end, it just didn’t matter as they were all — Sonja, Eli, Magne, Geir, Bobby and his kids, the French families, the Norwegian friends, everyone I met and shared time with — delightful, charming, caring, and fun.

And plus besides which, as anyone who knows me at all will tell you, all my friends are pretty and smart. In Kilsund, there are a lot of pretty and smart people to be friends with! There was a group of ladies — The Happy Ladies of Oslo — who got us moving to “Dancing Queen.” Ohmigosh — So Fun!

On the morning of the wedding, Bobby and Sonja treated the wedding party – all 60 of us (I want to say we were, like, 4 Americans, 10 French people, and 45 Norwegians) — to a marvelous boat tour — a three hour tour! — of the area where the Oslo Fjord meets the Black Sea near and around Kristiansand.

It was a spectacular day. The quality of the light was just exactly what I remember from having lived in Oslo as a kid between 1964 and 1968. There is nothing like it – clear and crisp and even and bright. Perhaps it was that light, or maybe it was the exuberance of being with so many happy Europeans...whatever it was...I suddenly came into possession of another memory — a song we used to sing as a child’s game:

Ta den ring og la den vandre

Fra den ene til den andre

Ringen er skjult, den sees ei.

Nettopp nå er ringen hos deg

Loosely translated: take this ring and let it wander, from one person to another…until it winds up with someone.

You see where this is going, right?

The gist of the game is to pick the right person with the ring.

Right?.

It occurred to me in that moment that that song could be appropriate — maybe even very appropriate — for this wedding.

Next year I will be 70. How have these words lived inside me all this time? How does it happen that I would remember every word, the tune, all of it? I practiced for Magne and Eli — they even approved my accent!

More importantly, how did I manifest the presence of mind to pull this up out of whatever memory bank it was lodged in?

I tell you what…more and more and more I imagine my brain to be the Museum of Flapdoodle — there is a whole lot of stuff up in there, and precious little of it seems useful to me…until…all of a sudden, it is!

All of which is to say, I determined to sing Ta Den Ring.

Amazingly, many (most? all?) of the Norwegians joined in when I started the song — some a little teary — and it became one of the sweetest moments in a late afternoon of nothing but sweet moments.

But wait, there’s more —

Earlier, I asked Bobby and Sonja if there were any other plans for music. I thought it might be good to have a song that everyone could sing together like “I Will” by the Beatles. Bobby and Sonja settled on “Handle Me with Care” by the Traveling Wilburys.

About two hours before the gathering, Bob called me up. I guess he had assumed that he would need to play the guitar and lead the singing, but/and, as with any properly appointed groom, he was nervous.

I get it.

“Bob, don’t worry about it. All you gotta do is show up, say ‘I do,’ kiss the bride, and: Boom-Done!”

What he didn’t know was that his daughter Mallory, who I think must have held the travel record having come from New Mexico, would lead us in the song!

That was a big and wonderful surprise for Bobby and Sonja, and another impossibly sweet and teary moment for the rest of us.

How luscious! And it was something for us — disparate people from all over — to do together. The singing and laughing together in different languages was clumsy and vulnerable and sweet as pie.

This has become more and more and more important to me lately — this doing of things together. And if it’s singing and laughing and breaking bread and cheering Love, so much the better.

For the weddings I’ve officiated lately, there comes a moment — generally after the vows and before the kiss — when I ask the wedding guests to take a vow, too. In this case, it went like this:

Do you promise, from this day forward, to encourage Sonja and Bobby as married partners, to love them, to give them your guidance when it is sought, and to support each of them to be steadfast in the promises they have made here today? If you do…then make a whole lot of noise!

As you might imagine…a Mighty Noise was made!

Sonja, in her gold sheath dress was stunning. She looked every inch the goddess I believe her to be: radiant, cheerful, bright!

Little Bobby looked pretty good, too!

The day was absolutely glorious. It extended well into a night-time that never seemed really to come —

I think we are good and lucky to have sweet weddings, old friends, cheery holidays especially in hard times.

The journey there and back, as I reported earlier, was Just The Worst. But the being there — the being present — was worth every trial. It was a culmination of finding some joy just when the world has become so dark and you feel so old that you think you might just be past it all.

As we barrel into these holidays, I’m grateful for the memories of the Norwegian summer to warm my brittle little heart on this crispy cold day in the mountains of Western North Carolina. I’m grateful for the love between Sonja and Little Bobby and the Wedding of the Season that brought us all together.

And look! Now you’re in on the story, too, as I am surely grateful for you.

Merry and Bright —

Some Guy Says is written by Robert Arleigh White and distributed via Substack twice a month — give or take — and benefits mightily from the editorial support provided by Canetha Dodd.

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And so that’s what happened.

See, my social media is...vile. Most of you know. It’s not a secret. You’ve seen it. I am angry and loud and caustic and critical about my country. I have tried to moderate myself, but as soon as I became convinced that my posts were part of the resistance, there’s been no stopping me.

And further, I became certain that my posts were going to get me detained and deported at some point along my joyful journey.

That didn’t happen.

Nevertheless, that return was – by far and away – the worst travel experience of my life, and I am sure I created it via the expectations that I held…aka my attitude.

I had been invited to officiate the wedding of Sonja and Little Bobby in her home – and now their hometown – of Kilsund, Norway.

You probably recall that Bobby has been my best pal for more than 40 years. And Sonja is the bright and shining star to grace his life and now ours as well.

The island of Kilsund is placed where the Oslo Fjord meets the Black Sea. It’s pretty remote – you can’t just, you know, show up! – but even so, it functions as a kind of resort for fancy people in the early to mid-summer months. I was there in July and August, and it was beyond astonishing for its natural beauty, generous people, and simple living.

It has a store, a gas station, and one really nice restaurant where the wedding was staged. Maybe it had a stop sign here or there, but I don’t recall as much as a single stoplight other than the one governing the one lane bridge that allowed cars onto and off of the island.

It’s the kind of place where kids get boats before they get bikes.

Everything about being there was just exactly perfect: the people, the food, the weather, and most especially the wedding!

Getting there and back were different stories.

Getting there would have been bad enough all on its own – there were snafus with connections and flight times — I lost a full-on day of just being there! I even left my laptop with all my wedding notes at home (how does that even happen...???!!!?!?).

But coming back was…Just So Bad.

It started when I couldn’t manage an online check-in the night before my flight. I even called the airline which couldn’t confirm my check-in either, but not to worry, they said, I could just do it at the airport the next morning.

Fortunately, I didn’t trust this counsel; instead, I went immediately and directly to the airport.

It took an hour and a half to get things sorted and the flight confirmed. Thank goodness I did this early. An hour and a half the next morning would have caused me to miss the flight which, in retrospect, may have been its own kind of blessing.

Anyways...

The problem evidently stemmed from one of the mishaps of traveling in to Norway. My arrival had not been documented properly by the airline and so now I could not leave the country because there was no record of my having ever been in it. Imagine: there you are, standing right in front of some “official person” in a foreign country, and they can see you, and they are talking to you, but they cannot verify that you are there.

It’s like the exact opposite of what is happening in America today where, if you are undocumented, they will not see you or talk to you, and they cannot detain and deport you fast enough.

You see now why this thought of deportation rested in and wrestled with my mind. Right?

And that was the least of it. I won’t go into every single thing that happened because that would just make for some long and lousy reading.

But!

I will tell you this part –

When I finally made it to the States, the flight to Asheville from Atlanta was, after many delays, cancelled at 11:15p, and I was stuck overnight in Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

At about two in the morning, I lay down on the hard floor. Ten minutes in, my body was like, “Oh...um...no. You are way too old for this shit.” So I stumbled all over that goddam airport for the rest of the night. By “all over,” I mean I covered every concourse except for E all the while listening to recorded messages from the airport director and the Mayor of the City of Atlanta and the president of United Airlines telling me how lucky I was to be in the most efficient, most well-run, most welcoming airport in the world.

Har-rumph!

At about five o’clock in the morning when things started to open up, I found a coffee shop and got me a hot black cuppa to go, turned around and straightway fell down the escalator in Concourse D.

As will sometimes happen when things go awry like this, I felt myself to be tumbling in slow-slow-oh-so-slow motion. So slowly, in fact, that I clearly remember having these three distinct thoughts:

One: You gotta be fucking kidding me.

Two: Bob White, if you spill a drop of this coffee, I swear to god...

Three: Dude! Get UP!

Needless to say, at five o’clock in the morning, at the most efficient, most well-run, most welcoming airport in the world, there was no one to talk to. No one to check in with. No one to whom you might report an accident. No one to point you to Red Cross or whatever the Safety First Office is. And probably no Safety First Office in any case.

No one to pat your little head and tell you, “Aw honey, there there...”

Wanh.

At nine o’clock, I got to my gate where I met and made friends with a woman who is a hospice nurse and who, among other things, wanted to know what had happened to my knee. She pointed to my pants leg which was covered in bloody patches. I told her my story, and she cleaned me up and bandaged me right there, and together we got on the plane to Asheville.

All told, from arriving at the airport in Oslo to landing in Asheville was 38 hours. I was awake the entire time plus 8 more hours for a Personal Best of 46 hours straight.

[You know...on this point, I just want to say that I don’t think Keith Richards gets enough credit for this kind of thing.]

Today, I am convinced that all of this happened because I expected it to. Granted, I was thinking more along the lines of Gestapo Intervention, but that’s mainly because that’s what’s in the news. Short of that, this was nothing like I would have ever imagined for myself...except...I had imagined something bad.

That’s on me.

Fast forward a couple of weeks. I am with a friend who is walking me through the business he is in the process of selling. He points out a wall sconce with a burned-out bulb.

“In the 20 years, I have owned this place, I’ve never seen anyone else change a light bulb. It always and only comes down to me. I may as well just sell the whole damn thing broken and busted and dark.”

Hey hey hey, I thought, If it’s trouble you’re looking for, you will find it.

Even the Bible teaches: “Seek and ye shall find.” Right?

Honestly, I think most people think that verse means something else, but I am here to tell you that you are going to find – for better or worse –just exactly what you are looking for.

I suspect my friend had a lot more going on than simply a burned-out bulb: licensing and financing issues, mortality issues, existential dark night of the soul kind of issues. Living in the world today issues.

But...I mean...at the end of the day...the bulb got changed, the business got sold, it all worked out.

Just like I got home with a patched knee and a nurse for a new friend. Everything worked out.

I am reminded of my old friend Lenny. Once in my twenties, I was whining to him about something. I don’t remember what. But I definitely remember what he said: “You have never been in a situation in your life that did not work out.”

In that moment, I thought, “Yes I have!” and I started to list one tragic event, unfulfilled dream and frustrated expectation after another. But…you know…if all the things I had yearned for as a young man had come to be, I would probably be dead or in jail.

In fact, the worst things that ever happened to me have yielded my very best blessings.

So?

Were they the worst things?

Ah well. Things are what they are. I think we assign values of “good” and “bad” to things to help us navigate the illusion that we are managing it all. At the end of the day we do what we can with what we have and who we are at any given moment in life, right?

All these stories harken me back to the real test for me, The Storm.

I was so glib about that Storm. But in fairness to myself, I’d been in plenty of storms in Florida, so it never occurred to me that the most devastating hurricane of my life would find me in the mountains of western North Carolina.

On that Friday, as I was leaving to go home from work, I listened while everyone talked about their hurricane plans. How very cute, I thought. Just adorable.

I sat up all night and watched from my upstairs window while the thing blew through town. The next day we had no electricity. Yeah? So? That’s what happens when you have a gullywasher like that, the lights go out. No big deal.

The next day, Saturday, Bella and I explored our neighborhood. Things looked bad for sure, but – hey! – wasn’t that a mighty storm!

The next day, Sunday, I shot straight out of bed at 4am – Wait! I don’t have water! That’s fine for me – I have wine! – but what about Bella? If you read my last post, then you know that Bella is not given to suffering. Ever. Not for herself and certainly not for the likes of fools like me. She’s disdainful and dismissive, and that curt and impatient way she has of stamping her big fat foot to mark her displeasure is a terror all its own.

I remember calling out to the cosmos, I need water for Bella!!

Within an hour, my downstairs neighbor Karla had determined to evacuate. Unlike me, she had filled every pot, every pan, every vase, every vessel she had with potable water the night before. Together we lugged it all up to my place, and I had plenty for me and Bella and pretty much everyone on our floor.

Later on, my pals from the Little Jumbo came looking for me. They had grabbed all the big glass bottles of water from all the tabletops in that place and brought me six of them.

How about that? More than enough!

The next day, Monday, I shot straight up in bed again, this time wailing, “I got water, but I ain’t got no coffee! I need coffee!!”

There was no phone, there was no internet, but two hours later, there was an urgent voice calling me up from outside my window: “Bobby! Bobby White! We have your coffee! We brought you coffee!!” It was my sweet friend Jennifer and her tribe come to save me with a veritable vat of coffee!

More than enough!

The next day, Tuesday, I was feeling peckish – to say the least. I need food! That’s when I heard that World Central Kitchen had come to town!

So much food!

The next day, Wednesday, I talked to Ginny who – 40 minutes away – had lost nothing: not power or water or internet. “Come over here and get cleaned up.”

I joked with Ginny that I’d been so good at manifesting – water! coffee! food! – that I should get to work manifesting something real and special and useful. Something like...seven million dollars!

The next day when I got up, she asked, “How did you sleep?”

“Like a million bucks!” says I.

“Good! Only six million more to go,” says she.

Now when I tell this story in a RAWTalk, I ask the audience to join hands and chant with me:

SIX MILLION DOLLARS

SIX MILLION DOLLARS

SIX MILLION DOLLARS

– and Ima tell you the same thing I tell them: If you will chant this with me — even if it’s just inside your own head — and if I get six million dollars, I will split it with you!

I will. Honor Bright! (IYKYK)

It’s a cheery joke to think about all this, but the truth is...

I got to officiate my best friend’s wedding in a beautiful place with lots of luscious people. It was the honor of a lifetime, and you can’t put a price on that.

I made a commitment to the community where I now live. That commitment required me to serve it through The Storm and beyond in some of the worst days of its history, and I was rewarded with experiences I wouldn’t trade for...well...six million dollars.

Sometimes, I think that the fact that I am even here in the mountains at all is its own kind of miracle because...

...if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion, as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The faultfinder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life....You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor house. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet had worn a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight among the mountains.

I do not wish to go below now.

– Henry David Thoreau

Some Guy Says is written by Robert Arleigh White and distributed via Substack twice a month — give or take — and benefits mightily from the editorial support provided by Canetha Dodd.

You can subscribe for FREE!!

Please consider a paid subscription. It supports this work and creates opportunities for others. Paid subscriptions start at just $5/month!

Yogi the Yorkie was, by far and away, my most emotional dog.

Georgia the CLD (Cute Little Dog) was Just the Best Dog. Ever.

Bella the Shih-tzu is the dog I have now.

I don’t mean to be dismissive or disparaging.

For me and Yogi, it was love at first sight. With Georgia, our bond was set within 30 minutes.

Now Bella, at five-plus years in, I’m still not sure she approves of me or even likes me.

I know for a fact that she does not like children or dogs. Were she a human being, I don’t know that I’d cotton to her much either.

See...in her way, even though she came from a very fancy life, she is a kind of a rescue. So the truth is, I have, over time, had to lower both her standards and her expectations such that we can actually live together. So I get it if she harbors resentment.

One compromise has been that she gets to run the joint.

Have you ever noticed that? Pets – and technology, for that matter – they train us to do it their way.

You have already guessed that she is the smartest dog I’ve ever had. I’ll give her that. And also the most entitled.

She’s just not a warm-fuzzy.

Since the day we met, I’ve said, “She gets sweeter and sweeter every day!” And she does, right? She’s still not a sweet dog...but she is sweeter.

I got her shortly – very shortly – after Georgia passed. Friends advised me to be quick to find another dog because, as Bobby put it, “You hold so much capacity for affection for dogs, and you don’t have any place to put that right now.”

And he was right, as usual.

So, with lots of folks jumping up to help me scout out a new pooch, I went on the hunt.

But I was picky. This dog was too old, that one too young. One was too big, and one was too little. One was too hard, another too soft. I couldn’t seem to find the dog that was just right.

So I had a talk with myself: Bob White! This is not a fairytale. If you’re looking to replace Georgia, you won’t. You can’t.

Truth is, I wasn’t looking for Georgia when I found her, and just-that-fast we were a total team. She needed me to find her — and I probably needed her as much, too — but who even knew who she was? She’d been a street dog for a while. She could have been anything, you know? A snappy, yappy, shedding, shitting, noisy little nuisance.

But she turned out to be...special. And so sweet. Mostly, my job was to get out of the way while she explored and discovered herself as safe and happy and loved.

And as broken and pitiful as she was when I found her, she taught me, too, that I am truly safe and happy and surrounded by love and loving people at all times.

Lord have mercy...what our pets do for us and give to us!

Anyways.

Ultimately, the dog I found was Bella.

Honestly, maybe it’s that Bella was already safe and happy and loved, but circumstances at home led to real disruption. Trust me: circumstances at home can do that.

The point...the point is...she was the antithesis of Georgia in just about every imaginable way. She’s certainly not snappy, yappy, shedding, or noisy. And all you have to do is to look at her to see that she, too, is a CLD.

I’d go so far as to say she’s a VCLD: Very Cute Little Dog.

No, the differences between the two dogs manifest in highly nuanced but also profound ways: Demanding versus Grateful. Clear and Focused versus Curious and Available. Privileged versus Street.

Here’s how it all came to be.

I heard about a dog that needed re-homing quickly. It was all very straightforward. I contacted a lady. She gave me the address. I drove out to see.

I entered a gated community and drove up to a mighty fine house. The lady and her father greeted me. Her husband was at work, and her two boys were at school.

And that was part of the problem. See...there was just a whole lot of testosterone in that house. The lady dreamed of having a little girl. But after one boy and then another, she gave in and got Bella, a full-on purebred baby girl shih-tzu.

And Bella became her pampered darling.

Just to be clear – and near as I can tell – shih-tzus are bred, mostly, to be worshipped and adored, and that is pretty much what Bella does best because that is how she was trained to be: to hold a place of devotion and affection within the household.

Nature or Nurture? You tell me. Probably both.

Anyway...

About five years in, the family welcomed a real live baby girl.

Things were fine – kinda sorta – until the baby became a toddler and started doing toddler things like pulling the dog’s tail, yanking on her ears, and poking her in the eye. For our little four-legged household goddess, things became both unmanageable and unbearable.

One day, Bella laid down the law, and she acted out badly.

Now, here I should say that, for her breed, Bella is big. She is definitely credentialed as 100% purebred shih-tzu, but she’s two inches longer, one inch taller, and five pounds heavier than average. She has enormous feet. To my knowledge, she does not smile. Certainly not when she’s annoyed (which is how she most generally presents).

All of which is to say that she can be physically intimidating for a small dog and emotionally troublesome for a little girl.

I’m not sure what she did, but whatever it was was enough to consternate the family. Dad put his foot down: Enough! Bella must go! Right away!

And that’s where I came in.

I walked into this beautifully appointed home. I couldn’t help but notice a considerable pile of stuffed garbage bags in the living room. They seemed out of place.

Hold that thought.

Bella bounded in, stopped in her tracks, and fixed me with the look of general disdain that I have come to recognize as just her way of regarding the world around her. You really can’t take it personally.

I had some treats with me, and when she followed commands – Turn! Sit! – I would give her one. Then another. Things were going great! We are both motivated by the promise of treats! Could this be our bonding point?!

Then I asked if I could pick her up. “Yes, go on!” So, I did, and she bit me. Hard.

I don’t think I dropped her, but I did put her down fast.

“Well, this has been great, but I think I need to head out.”

The lady rushed to say, “Well, then let’s get her loaded into your car!”

“Oh, I don’t know...I think...I think I need to think about...”

“No! You need to understand,” and here the woman fairly teared up. “She needs to be gone before my husband comes home from work today or else!”

Or else? Or else what? Or else...the dog? Or else...her? Or Else??

And now the lady was really crying, and I understood. Whatever else, this was a breakup, and it was going to be a bad one. “We need to move quickly! We need to get her in your car before the boys get home from school! Please?”

I mean, it was a lot.

The immediate scurry around the house while the lady and her father gathered up the garbage bags in the living room felt urgent and scary. I didn’t know what to do – what’s with all the bags? And NO, I am NOT picking her up again – but it was clear to me that we were in flight and that my role was to rescue the dog that had just tried to rip the thumb off of my right hand.

On the ride home, I didn’t know if she was going to try to scream as I would have, or shit in the car, or...wait! What about that baby? Had she bitten the baby?! Was she going to be a biter? Because then we are gonna have a problem!

Side note for those who are wondering: she has never bitten anyone since she bit me on that day, so…

Anyways —

I veered between wary and frantic. I called Cindy to have her talk me down. Here I was, I was supposed to be the hero in this story, but I felt like some wired dupe and a chickenshit.

By the way, if I just described your partner, you’re in trouble! You know that, right? What I mean to say here is...Bella and I got off on the wrong foot. We were at odds from the start. Neither one of us made this choice, and neither were we cheered by it.

Once we got home and I’d gotten her a little settled, I opened the garbage bags. They were full up with Bella’s things! I was astounded. There were Bags and Bags Full of Outfits! Toys! Special Grooming Products...for ears, teeth, hair, her feet for cryin’ out loud!

Bella might be my dog now, but she had been a goddess and a Barbie doll in a golden life in a gated home. Who was she to be going forward? This change was going to be hard on her.

When I pulled out an outfit to see what it was, she all over me: Mine! Mine! Mine!! Put it on me! Put it on me NOW!

She. Loves. This.

There was a pink puffer jacket with a big bow featuring a big rhinestone right in the middle of it. She adores that thing.

There were multiple Christmas sweaters, Halloween costumes, Saint Patrick’s Day t-shirts. One little shirt that has a bustle of orange tulle gathered at the bottom and a message that reads “My Lil Wil’ Thang!” When she’s wearing that, she fairly sashays around the house with a little extra flair, floof, and flounce.

My Lil Wil’ Thang in tulle, indeed. My suspicion is that she is way more calculated than that.

And that is the good news about Bella: she knows what she is doing and she is clear about it. I never have to worry about what she wants or what she is thinking — and she is thinking all the time...even when she’s sleeping) — because she shows me.

Sometimes, she’ll stand over her food dish and just stare at it. When I catch her eye, she conveys how annoyed she is that she has to go to even this much trouble. She looks at me and back at her dish and then back at me again as if to say, “Are you blind? Can you really not see what I’m looking at? Really? Then let me be clear: I don’t see anything, Bub! Ok?”

Other times, she goes to the front door and just sits facing it.

Everyone knows what that means.

I swear. If she just had thumbs...

Ten o’clock at night is toy time. She grabs her favorite little red cotton barn and shakes all the squeaky cotton felted pigs out of it. While I’m chasing down pigs, she grabs the owl she inherited from Bennie the Dog and chomps on it till it squeals, and suddenly the whole house is a flurry of fur and felt.

One night, I came home late from work and she was waiting at the door. She never waits for me at the door. At first I thought, Oh! How sweet! Then I thought, Nah – she’s not that sweet, she must really need to go!

Wrong on both counts.

She stamped her fat foot and made that “Harrumph” sound that shih-tzus make (Canetha calls it her Snerf), turned on her heel and put herself right to bed!

That little dog had just scolded me!

And I felt bad about it – like I deserved it.

Which I did.

When she falls asleep, she literally falls asleep. She collapses, and she’s dead weight and immovable. And for a little girl, she has a mighty snore.

I’ll say this: she is very polite. She waits to be invited before she jumps up onto her spot on the sofa.

And I’ll admit, too, that I spoil her. In our little space, she has five sleeping spots. Her days are spent chasing sunbeams to sleep in.

Surely, she lives my dream life. In my next go-round, I want to come back as one of my dogs. That’s some easy livin’ right there.

Bella will be 11 on her next birthday which is in December, so she has surpassed me in age...by a smidge. Still, she has a lot of puppy in her. This makes me feel hopeful about myself. She scampers and plays, leaps and twirls in the crazy happy dance she performs while I’m getting her dinner together. She strikes these amazing and nutty attack poses – Bam! Bam! Bam! – over things only she can see.

Or imagine.

See, pretty much, she’s gone blind over the course of the last year. At home, she knows her way around and her little sniffer gets her to where she needs to pee, poop, play, eat, and sleep.

But she hates to get in the car now. She hates going places. The smells are different. She can’t quite make out what’s coming her way. She really hates not being in charge.

Her confidence becomes incrementally more and more compromised by her inability to see. She is adjusting, which is to say she is changing. Her changes put me in mind of my dad and his macular degeneration. They put me in touch with some of my own end-of-life care training. They frame a lot of the changes in my world, my community, my art, my self.

Eleven years...12, 13 if we’re lucky...67, 68, 69...it’s all a pretty short ride.

I try to give her autonomy, but more and more she needs me. She cuddles more. She follows me. She stares at me.

I wonder what she sees, if she can even see me at all.

Strangers stop us on our walks to admire her. My wicked joke is always to say, “Would you like to have her?!” while extending her leash in my hand. Canetha and Daniel, Ginny, Kim, Bobby, Kevin, Blair, Lesley, Bo and Courtney, all my friends fawn over her and tell me what a pretty girl, what a sweet girl she is.

I don’t know.

But this one thing is for sure: she definitely is sweeter.

Some Guy Says is written by Robert Arleigh White and distributed via Substack twice a month — give or take — and benefits mightily from the editorial support provided by Canetha Dodd.

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Today I took myself to Hendersonville to pick up a guitar that I’d dropped off for repair.

I went the most slygolly way I knew how, and I took a ton of time to do it.

I wanted to see as much of the mountains as I could a year and some later after The Storm.

The Storm. That is what we all call Hurricane Helene.

The Storm hit on Friday, September 27, 2024. Today, as I am writing this post, is Monday, October 13, 2025

In remembering its after effects, I’ve been telling people we were without electricity and reliable Internet for about 10 days. A Facebook “memory” corrects me. It was more like two and a half weeks.

I know for sure we were without running water for 53 days.

In fact, it was from all of this that the whole Some Guy Says thing came to be. See, for those first few days after, that’s how we knew anything at all:

Some Guy said, Here’s where you can find water.

Some Guy said, World Central Kitchen is open Downtown. [Side note: Somehow WCK found us between their work in Peru and Gaza, and may God bless them for all they did…and do. I never imagined myself standing in a food line. There were days it was all we had, and it was so good, and I am still so grateful.]

Some Guy said, They have Internet at the library and the fire station. It’s spotty, but they’ve got it.

I remembered, from years past, being away from my home when storms would whip through Florida. I remembered seeing things that most folks in Florida, without Internet or the electricity to run it, could not.

And so it was that last year, insofar as I was able to receive messages at all, I got tons of alerts from family and friends and folks I didn’t even really know: You’ve got to get out of there – you don’t know how bad it is.

I knew they were right. I hadn’t a clue.

It was probably 5 days or a week before I had a sense that Oh...This is going to be A Really Big Problem.

It had already been a hard year here, but I’d made a commitment to this place, this community, so I stayed. Looking back over it, I wouldn’t change a thing.

I mean…except for The Storm part.

But in fact, there are some things about The Storm that I miss.

I miss talking to people on the street. I miss hearing their stories of loss and discovery, devastation and triumph, the telling of those stories in the moment.

We still tell our stories, but a year and some later they have become memories, and that is different.

I miss the gathering of musicians on downtown street corners in impromptu sessions of the kind of music I suspect has provided comfort in these hills for generations.

I miss the way we all checked on each other. I miss having folks show up with surprise treats like hot coffee, chilled wine, ice and water.

Ohmigosh — I do love treats!

I miss Little Jumbo being open hours afterwards in a “bring-your-own-glasss-or-cup” kind of situation. LJ — as it always does — created and served a real hub of community and care and information and great good cheer.

I miss gathering at creekside behind my place and loading up buckets of water for flushing toilets.

That’s how I met a lot of my neighbors and made new friends.

I miss handing out water at distribution points. I miss collecting water from Ginny’s place in Brevard to take to Ezra’s or Little Jumbo for distribution.

Water.

Too much water just about destroyed this place, and too little water — and restricted access to it — kept it shut down for months.

A year and some in, though, I am celebrating, too.

I’m celebrating Fall! We actually have a season this year!

Last year, if the storm hadn’t knocked the trees over, it surely scattered all the leaves off of them before they had a chance to turn. It was dark for a long time.

I’m celebrating the opening of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Ok, so it’s not open all the way yet, but 50 weeks after the storm, the Parkway did finally open from Asheville to Mount Mitchell.

How glorious to be able truly to get out and into the mountains again!

And that’s how I started my ride to Hendersonville.

West on 70

Those of you familiar with the area already know that this route is completely counterintuitive to my goal.

And those of you already familiar with me know that this is the Story of My Life.

I got onto the Parkway from 70 coming out of Asheville. The ride up the mountain was stunning and powerful. I admit it, I got weepy.

But it was also very different.

Some overlooks and pull-offs are still closed, and a lot of road remains under construction. Some mountainsides are completely denuded of trees and wiped away in mudslides. Either that or there is a lot of other storm damage – ancient trees just a-tumble and tangled in a heap.

Naturally you can’t get close enough to it to take many pictures.

But you can imagine—

One thing becomes clear very quickly: in a year without traffic or cyclists or hikers, our beautiful mountains are truly showing out! They are covered with vast patches of wild blue phlox and purple mountain thistle and stalks of bright yellow goldenrod.

And these blooms in turn truly bless bajillions of butterflies and bees.

No matter what we may think or feel or miss or ache about, the mountains are steadfast.

Ginny says that there are 12 seasons in Western North Carolina: early summer, summer, late summer, early fall, fall, and so on. You get it. Early fall is just now giving way to fall. It’s still pretty green, but if you look you can find A Red Tree! And some yards away A Yellow Tree! In ten days, these mountains will be ablaze with color and light!

I made it to Craggy Gardens and started a short hike down the trail there when a park ranger warned me about the bears. “These aren’t like your city bears” – of which there are plenty in my own neighborhood – “they haven’t seen people in a couple of years now, and they aren’t used to it.”

Yikes.

I head back down to 70.

70 into Black Mountain

On the way to Black Mountain, I pass through Swannanoa. You’ll remember from earlier posts that this little mountain town had just about been wiped off the map. A couple of important bridges opened in the late spring and early summer, but a whole lot of road work is still going on. The large Ingles Grocery Store and the post office are still closed. In that shopping center, there was also an Ace Hardware. It had a sign out front that read We Have Everything You Need! And indeed, as I discovered more than once, they did.

Today, there’s still nothing there.

9 to Bat Cave

As you first veer away from Black Mountain on Highway 9, there are three large signs that warn of construction ahead and forbid trucks from taking the road. That makes all kinds of sense. Highway 9 twists and turns in corkscrew patterns up the mountain and down again on the other side. Some guy once said it slithers along like a snake with a broken spine. I always wondered what trucks were doing on that road anyway.

It’s a glorious ride. At this higher elevation, there is a lot more color on the trees, but I dare not take my eyes off the road to admire it too much.

At four points along the way to Bat Cave the road collapses into one. Temporary stop lights and road workers guide us. At times we just stop for a mighty long time.

One piece of the road in particular is being reconstructed over a part of the mountain that is just not there. In other words, it feels like I’m driving above nothing.

Obviously something anchors the road, but I don’t know how else to describe it.

The most harrowing part comes just as you come to Bat Cave where 9 meets 64 and 74A. The road itself gives way altogether, and I am traveling on gravel. I can see where I am going about 200 yards ahead but I don’t much understand the path, so I put the steering wheel in a kind of death grip and white-knuckle it right on through and trust that the person waving the orange flag knows what it is all about.

64 to Hendersonville

As soon as I cross the bridge at 9 and 64, there are signs that say the road is closed. I can’t turn around, so I keep going. At one point, even my GPS tells me – and I kid you not – Be aware! You are no longer traveling on the road!

Mostly I just stay in line and follow the car ahead of me. In the sections where two lanes again fold into one, I can see massive sections of the old highway smashed into bits and resting in the river.

And it’s not just the road. The whole river has been moved.

I’ve been up and down this twisty winding mountain road hundreds of times. My joke has always been that I could drive it with my eyes closed.

That joke isn’t funny anymore.

Everything is changed – the curves, the color, even the sound of the river. Trees that framed a dappled drive are just gone, and the road lays bare and wide open to the sun. New light hits hard, and the new road shifts in sharp and unfriendly ways.

Finally, some two and a half hours after leaving home, my GPS tells me I can stay on this road until I get to David’s.

Guitars are astonishing things. All told, I have four, and each one is different. Each has its own personality, its own capacity, even its own aspirations. But this one – the one I am here to pick up -- it’s the one thing I’ve always said I’ll grab when I run out of a burning building. It’s a powerful thing. It has a deep, authoritative ring to it, and it can push out some real true love notes, too.

It’s been less than a week, but it is still a real joy to be reunited with it. Especially after the trip I took to get to it!

The guitar is an Alvarez-Yari. It is a real work of art. It was built in 1976. I got it then when I was 20 years old, and I’ve had it for — obviously — well more than half of my life. They only made 800 of these, and mine is numbered at 183. I’m pretty sure Bob Weir has one just like it.

Of his guitar, Woody Guthrie famously said, “This machine kills fascists.” My luthier, David, repaired a crack in the binding at the bottom. If you’ve ever seen me play, you know I slap the body a lot (think Joni Mitchell or Ritchie Havens). David also intuitively lowered the action just a smidge, so it’s much easier, much more of a pleasure and a joy to play. It’s like a whole new machine…ready to play and slay!

Back home, I cannot take my hands off it. My fingers trail along in winding patterns and broken passages and oddball shapes, echoing that twisted ride out to Hendersonville.

Now I’m thinking…it’s been a minute since I wrote a new song.

Wouldn’t it be something if I could let The Storm squeeze one more out?

Some Guy Says is written by Robert Arleigh White and distributed via Substack twice a month — give or take — and benefits mightily from the editorial support provided by Canetha Dodd.

Please consider a paid subscription. It supports this work and creates opportunities for others. Subscriptions start at just $5/month!

This post is, if nothing else, an indulgence.

Which is to say, I hope you will indulge me.

Over the course of 37 years of performance, Charlotte Mabrey and I amassed a colossal body of work. Some of the pieces were original. Some of those pieces were profound and lovely. Some were angular and hard. Some were hilarious. Others were not.

Some were just interesting and contemplative. To us, anyway. We did a movement piece with a hula-hoop wrapped in mylar while reciting Allen Ginsberg’s Song.

Another time, we did a sleep dance to a recording of Marlene Dietrich’s version of "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face.” We had similar builds, similar haircuts. We made featureless face masks out of white gauze. The dance, choreographed with real tenderness by Rosemary Fletcher, simply showed two people sleeping together. We started in a kind of embrace and pulled apart. We mirrored moves and then an arm would flop across the chest of the other, we got tangled, we separated, the covers got hot. It was intimate and genderless. You really couldn’t tell who was who or where or which or what.

Tongues — which I wrote about in the last post — was like that. And as big as it was (it covered about 45 minutes all told), it was only a part of An Evening of 20^th Century Music in that year. Charlotte also played an extraordinary piece called “Lift Off” for three timpanis (amazing), “Wind in the Bamboo Grove,” written by Keiko Abe for marimba (extraordinary), and a few other showstoppers noteworthy for their beauty, complexity, diversity, and power.

It was a great night. A really great night. Charlotte was glowing, the audience was thrilled, and I was just in awe of the whole thing. All I could think was, “Mama, Mama — look at me! I’m standing up here with a symphony musician!”

For an encore that night, we did a piece called “I Am Standing Here Waiting for You to Say Something.” “Standing Here” was a goof on the whole notion of the smarty-pants pretension of Performance Art. It called for each of us to appear wearing tuxedo jackets and pants, swimmer’s goggles and flippers. I stood in back of the hall holding a chainsaw and Charlotte entered the stage. Her task was to repeat this sentence – “I am standing here waiting for you to say something” – over and over and over again for exactly one minute and twelve seconds. The trick in the instructions for the piece called for her to begin the chant with no vowel sounds and gradually to add them in over the course of her allotted time. Once she achieved the fully realized statement, I was then to yell at her, “YOU ARE STANDING THERE WAITING FOR ME TO SAY SOMETHING?” and then run the chainsaw for exactly two minutes.

Swear to God. We didn’t make this up. It’s a real piece.

Now...bear in mind, we had — or rather Charlotte in particular had — just, completed an evening’s performance that lasted just shy of two hours. For a giggle, we threw in a three-minute chainsaw piece.

Well.

The following week, The Florida Times-Union ran a review of the evening, but rather than mention any of the really good work that had taken place, the writer focused solely on the encore. “Why were we made to sit through this?” “Is this...’Art’?” “Was there something exemplary about the running of the chainsaw that I just missed?”

Simply put, if you had not been there, you would have thought we ran a chainsaw for two hours and called it Art.

Harumph.

Char was disappointed. I was annoyed.

We tried to boost each other by saying things like, “Well...it obviously made an impact!” “Maybe she got there late?” And so on.

But then Charlotte had an idea...!

The next year, and for every year thereafter, at the beginning of each Evening of 20^th Century Music — and I mean First Thing — I walked onto the stage with a chainsaw and placed it downstage center.

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t turn it on. I barely acknowledged anything or anyone. I was deliberate and intentional. I put it down. And then I left.

The first time I did it, the audience went nuts! They erupted in cheers and applause and laughs! They got the joke instantly and in a Really Big Way!

Nothing else needed to be said about the matter — the chainsaw had officially become a thing!

Some years later, Char bought 300 hundred little yellow plastic chainsaw keychains – enough for the first 300 people who showed to have one!

I tell you what – it got folks there early for subsequent performances, that’s for sure! Yes indeed — that’s how you do that!

Over the years, the appearance of the chainsaw drew even bigger responses and, of course, by then it had just becme a part of the iconography of the show. Half the people there – way more than half in all likelihood – had no idea what they were cheering. They just knew they were supposed to.

How many times did so many of us watch Charlotte, with seeming effortless ease, turn disappointment into triumph? Char could do that.

And others seemed to learn quickly how to pick up on that from her.

One time, after I’d placed the chainsaw and the people had calmed down, Char approached the crowd and said, “You know, Bob and I work really hard on these things. And sometimes it’s beautiful and sometimes it’s hilarious and sometimes it’s jarring and sometimes we really are just working it out right in front of you. But every single time, somebody comes backstage after a show and says, ‘I really loved it, but I think you should really think about doing it differently’ or ‘Did you think about trying…’ or ‘You know, you should add this sound or that,’ and, to tell you the truth, right after we do a show is probably not a good time time to offer suggestions. In fact, the only reasonable thing you should say to either one of us after one of these performances is: “Oh my God! This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen!”

And then — to make the point, before we had done anything at all — she got the whole audience to chant “Oh my God! This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen!” over and over and over again.

Well.

Later on in the show, I lay on my back and with my feet and hands lifted up I balanced a brake drum in the air. Charlotte played a really complex rhythm with two little drum sticks on the brake drum. It sounded tinkly and brittle…really at odds with the strong visual image we were elsewise creating. Then there was supposed to be a very specific sound cue, and then I was supposed to recite a poem — “Turtle Knowledge” by Valerie Anthony — flat on my back, and then lights were to fade to black.

Well.

The sound cue never came. And it never came. And still, it did not come. And there we were: me on my back and Char standing over me telegraphing back and forth for what seemed like hours, “What do we do, what do we do??”

Suddenly out of nowhere, someone shrieked, “Oh my God! This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen!”

Brilliant! Or, as Char would say, “Epic!”

In keeping with the theme of hardware, we once did a piece with a trash can. We carefully approached a shiny new metal trash can with baseball bats. We’d each gone through really hard breakups and one thing and another, and we thought of that can as the object and target of our respective rage and pain. We touched it tentatively. Poked it. We pushed it around, and we kicked it. A bat came down hard on the lid, and another bat swatted it in the side. Gradually, we built up to the point of just beating the living shit out of that poor can with the bats til it was just a mangled metal mess.

We left the stage beaming, arm in arm.

Ohmigosh! That sound! So, so satisfying!

True Pro Tip: if you are ever having the kind of day where destroying a metal trash can with a baseball bat presents itself as the best option for addressing your situation, be sure the trash can is weighted.

Elsewise, it’s Just The Best.

Years later, rather than end the shows with the chainsaw piece, we would perform another sort of goof — this little poem that Char had found and that I adored — “Goodtime Jesus” by James Tate:

“Jesus got up one day a little later than usual. He had been dreaming so deep there was nothing left in his head. What was it? A nightmare, dead bodies walking all around him, eyes rolled back, skin falling off. But he wasn’t afraid of that. It was a beautiful day. How ’bout some coffee? Don’t mind if I do. Take a little ride on my donkey, I love that little donkey. Hell, I love everybody.”

I love me some Charlotte on a Sunday. And I love you, too.

Here are some little treats:

“Snapback” is a fun thing we did to launch into a Jack Kerouac piece, “Two Cops Did What Two Cops Do.” If you want to see how this whole thing shakes out, go to the last video below, the one of Char’s last UNF show, and skip ahead to 1:29:00.

This is Keiko Abe performing Wind in the Bamboo Grove — I wish I could find a recording of Char playing this.

This is Charlotte’s last recital at the University of North Florida. I’d like to ask you to start at 1:04:50. It is my favorite part — Charlotte performs with her student, Greg Hersey. Please, please note that because she is standing behind the marimba. That means she is playing the piece from memory, upside down, and backwards. And beautifully. And flawlessly. It truly merits your attention. Also…it gets real treatsy at the end…just sayin…!

Thanks for indulging me today — cheers!

Here is what they are saying…

She is gone

I will miss her

She was so open

Her strength was her willingness to be vulnerable

She shined a mighty bright light

I cannot believe how much I learned from her

She was a treasure

I worked with her

She was so funny

“Give yourself some grace” was always her advice

She believed in me

I wanted to give her my very best

She was a renowned percussionist and instructor

Her dedication was astonishing

She will be missed

Her work will be missed

She embodied love, care and belonging

I always wanted to be around her

She lit up – and she lit up spaces

I loved talking with her

If you knew her, you knew that she believed in you and your capabilities so much that you started to, too.

Indeed. That’s what happened to me.

Because of her, I became a true believer. Among other things.

Of course She is Charlotte Mabrey, my art partner for nearly 40 years and my cherished friend.

She passed away on Sunday, September 7.

I was fortunate – truly – to be able to spend much of her last week with her in Jacksonville. A lot happened in those meetings. One time, she came out of a seeming sleep and turned to me. I felt like a discovery. She wanted me to know that she had learned for sure that she had done nothing to cause the cancer that was killing her. That was a mighty relief for her.

In that moment, I heard myself say, “Sometimes...these things just happen.” She looked at me and smiled.

“Tongues,” she said.

“Right.”

And she drifted off to sleep again.

Grace.

Tongues by Sam Shepard and Joseph Chaikin was the first piece that she and I took on together way back in 1988.

Looking back...our pairing was at once unlikely and intentional.

I always seemed to know who she was. I mean...you could not not know. She was the principal percussionist with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, the beloved professor of music at the University of North Florida, a much sought after cultural icon, and a perennial fixture on the local cool-kids scene (with nary a shred of irony or pretense to be found).

I think I may have been present – though unintentionally – for one of her first performances of an Evening of 20^th Century Music in the Boat House at UNF which was a kind of on-campus beer joint and fast-food hall. She used to talk about being in the middle of an intense marimba solo when someone would call out, “Pepperoni pizza —ready at the counter!”

I know for sure I saw her perform one of those now legendary Evening of 20^th Century Music events when she upgraded from the Boat House to the lobby of the Robinson Theatre. I remember her playing the marimba with so much love and tenderness and then running through the little space in delight and abandon while stroking a guiro as a colleague recited a piece about this Spanish instrument in German.

It was just so weird!

And unexpected and delightful!

It wasn’t long before I found myself sitting with her and her student and colleague, Lee Hunter, at Ragtime in Atlantic Beach to discuss how I might fit into one of these evenings.

Here’s what happened.

I was working on an independently produced performance of Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love to be given at Players by the Sea in Jacksonville Beach. I was to play Eddie to Valerie Anthony’s astounding May. When the rubber hit the road, I couldn’t make the dates work, and so Michael Emerson stepped in do the play with Val.

Whatever else, that casting was a big fat hit. The chemistry between Valerie and Michael was palpable, and their expertise as mighty and accomplished performers made for a play that was powerful: riveting and shattering.

Moreover, Fool for Love ignited a passion in Jacksonville for Sam Shepard’s plays that bordered on the feverish.

At the time, I was working as the Artistic Director for Theatre Jacksonville and teaching at Fletcher Sr. High School in Neptune Beach. My Fletcher colleague — the aforementioned Lee Hunter — was a science teacher. Together we sponsored the junior class which puts on the senior prom. Lee was also studying percussion with Charlotte. We were all so busy.

Lee had seen Fool for Love and had fallen under its spell. Knowing of my connection to the theatre, she wondered if I had or had access to any of Shepard’ plays. I gave her a couple of anthologies, one of which contained an interesting entry: Tongues: a piece for percussion and voice.

Lee had close and first-hand knowledge of Charlotte’s passion for performance art, and she knew I was interested, too, so she brought the piece to our attention. In fact, it was Lee who envisioned that we could do the piece together.

So the first time I sat down with Charlotte Mabrey was at that meeting in Ragtime. It was very like a business meeting to check each other out to see if we could do something together, something with the piece.

Charlotte was quick to say Yes!

I was excited and scared.

See, near as I could tell, Charlotte was “a real artist.”

Char wasn’t having it. She was a creative spirit who treated me like her equal, and she never wavered in her faith, trust, and active encouragement of our work together.

That was a part of the secret, I think. I couldn’t do what she did, nor could she take on the things that I brought. In short, we couldn’t get in the way, you know? This was always true. It was always The Work when we worked.

In this regard, particularly, she changed my life, my sense of myself, my sensibilities, my aspirations, my own work and my understanding of it.

Make no mistake — there was delight! So much delight in discovery and execution and sharing and being and knowing and doing! Working and Playing!

We treated Tongues with real care for every comma, sound, interaction, nuanced glance, subtle move, those tiny things that only she and I would hear or see that would guide us directly to you, what we would share with you next. We worked with real tenderness for and awareness of each other.

And we thought about you. A lot.

When I look back on it now, the amount of work that went into Tongues was herculean. By contrast, when we performed Some Guy Says in the Bab’s Lab space at CoRK just this past February, most of what we offered was planned over the course of a short – and short-handed – phone conversation:

Ok – so just listen for when I...

Right, and then I’ll just step in with...

Exactly!

Got it!

There’s a great line in Fool for Love where May says, “I can smell your thoughts before you think ‘em.” That was who we were, who we had become...like old married people.

If it is anything at all, Tongues is a meditation on death.

And that makes it appropriate for this post.

Beginning.

Ending.

As a title, I think Tongues derives from speaking in tongues – glossolalia: sounds approximating words and speech, but essentially unknown.

Tongues explores and imagines and ponders the experience of death which is also essentially unknowable. Even when you are sitting right there with someone who is actively dying. Even among people of faith. The idea of going to heaven, as only one example, is heavily filtered through the lenses of the things we know – or think we know – about life and living. (A good read on this point is Heaven: a history by Collen McDannell and Barnard Lang.) Tongues explores the things that actually and mostly happen to people along with the things we imagine individually and culturally.

And sonically.

And emotionally.

It is at once secular and sacred.

It is stark and circular in that it begins with a death and moves reflectively through being born, growing, finding voice, being human (in and out of love and at work and inside of the various relationships that most people have and lose), and winding its way back again to dying and what may or may not happen after.

The trust and depth of feeling and creativity that characterized that work, and the relationship that grew so tenderly from it, was – and remains – a mighty and unfathomable gift.

With that in mind, I recorded a reading of Tongues today to share with you.

Obviously, with many more years under my belt, and without my partner to play with, this Tongues is different. I was 32 in 1988. Death was something I mostly imagined. Today, as a certified end of life caregiver, I have been honored to sit with many people who are actively dying. So there’s that.

Someone, I think it was Grace Slick of all people, once described something as being “conspicuous in its absence.” In reading Tongues aloud today, I find this indeed to be so. And perhaps you will sense it, too. Without her, this Tongues has a hollowness. Important transitions just go missing. Mysterious things become a little too obvious and obvious things become oblique. It misses some sparkle. It moves, but it feels like a lot.

Especially today.

Still...she informs the piece, and it’s what I have to offer you in her honor.